P2 · Who Owns the Number · ACT III · s7 · the buyer's meter
The buyer's own performance meter took the medium — and landed inside the seller's log.
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FIGURE 03 The buyer's meter wins the medium
How to read this
still mark = grade A — an audited / settled reading. (This whole figure is grade A, so nothing shimmers.)
cyan = an independent number — the buyer's own keyed performance meter, held by the party doing the buying.
amber = a seller-owned number — that same meter now read off the platform's own log.
struck red = a corrected / DEAD claim — a popular legend this piece knocks down.
The pay-per-action part is drawn cyan→amber: the one part whose owner reverts. Reduced motion:
every shimmer becomes a static hatched band.
y-axis — % of US internet ad revenue by pricing basis · 100% = all US internet ad revenue, 2008.
The pay-per-action part reverts
cyan — the buyer's keyed, independent meter →
amber — now read off the seller's own log.
CPM and “other” are the neutral remainder of the whole.
In 2008, 57% of US internet ad revenue was bought on the buyer's own performance meter
(pay-per-action), up from 51% a year earlier; only 39% was sold the seller's way, on impressions
(CPM). The buyer's independent meter had won the medium — and now sat inside the seller's own log.
DEADPlatforms invented performance advertising.The keyed-reply, pay-for-response meter is over 150 years old — mail-order and
direct response priced on action long before a platform existed. Online, the buyer's old meter
simply moved inside the seller's log.