Hey You. Yes, I’m Talking to You. You’re Following the Wrong Advertising KPIs…

With Digital Advertising Provocateur, Jonas Manthey

Jonas Manthey unapologetically explains what everyone is getting wrong about digital advertising. And what metrics and strategies they should actually be paying attention to.

What’s a belief you held early in your advertising career that you now completely disagree with? What changed your mind?

Early in my career, I believed the goal was always to develop the “best” and most sensible media strategy to ensure a company’s success. Over the years, I had to learn that marketing, media, and advertising often serve as political instruments within many organizations. They are frequently used for personal profiling and often have nothing to do with their intended purpose. When it comes to media and marketing, everyone acts like they are an expert. Sometimes I think I should have become an expert in nuclear physics instead.

If you had to remove one common metric from advertising dashboards forever (CTR, impressions, CPM, etc.), which would you choose and why?

Without hesitation, all three. The industry’s obsession with these KPIs has led it to absurdity, burning billions of euros. This hyper-focus is exactly what opened the door to fraud, bots, and Made-for-Advertising (MFA) sites in the first place. It is a primary reason why “media and advertising” has devolved from being viewed internally as an “investment” to a “cost center.” “Cheap media” and a “greed is good” mentality symbolize the spread of #Mediamordor.

And to explain what I mean by #Mediamorder, let me say this: In the realm of modern advertising and media, #Mediamordor represents the dark, corrupted, and perilous landscape of the digital marketing industry. A desolate wasteland driven by malice, greed, and a relentless thirst for power. Just as Mordor threatens to consume Middle-earth with darkness, #Mediamordor threatens to destroy the core values of advertising through an obsession with toxic practices that deliver no real value.

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Tell me about a time data told you one thing, but your creative instincts told you another. Which did you follow, and what happened?

I could give endless examples, but one day our agency recommended increasing the advertising budget on Tinder because the click-through rates were sensationally good and the CPC was incredibly low. When I asked the media consultant if he was familiar with the term “gunshot tindering,” he just stared at me blankly. That was the moment I established the “qualified visit” as a KPI. Essentially, this metric measures the portion of generated traffic that does not immediately bounce, has an above-average time on site, and earns extra points for engagement (scrolling, clicks, etc.). Spoiler, this eliminates 80-90% of the traffic generated by your campaigns. After introducing this KPI, we ran another campaign on Tinder…after that Tinder was never recommended to me again.

If every tracking cookie and personal identifier vanished tomorrow, how would good
advertising have to change?

It would be the best thing that could happen to the industry. Good advertising would have to return to its roots: creativity, context, and a genuine understanding of the target audience—instead of hunting them across the web like a stalker.

We would stop viewing the user merely as a data point and start evaluating environments. If I sell running shoes, I should advertise within the context of marathon articles (contextual targeting) rather than bothering a user on a cake recipe site just because they searched for shoes three weeks ago. Advertising would once again act like a respectful guest rather than a misguided, intrusive surveillance state.

What’s the smartest use of a very small budget you’ve ever seen, and what can big
brands learn from that example?

The smartest small budgets completely ignore the broad “spray and pray” approach. I once saw a B2B startup that invested its entire tiny budget into a few extremely well-researched industry newsletters and a high-quality, printed direct mail letter sent to 50 top decision-makers. No programmatic remnant inventory, no social media noise. The conversion rate was astronomical. Relevance matters, but unfortunately it’s completely underestimated these days.

Big brands can learn from this that focus and relevance are far more powerful than sheer reach. Instead of scattering millions in the programmatic swamp, they should ask themselves, “How can we be truly unmissable and valuable to our core target audience?”

For me, contextual targeting is an integral part of any strategy. The only signal I can truly rely on is the content the user is engaging with at that exact moment. That saves me from wasting money on pseudo-audience targeting.

Never forget, media and advertising should be measured on the real outcome and not on pseudo-KPIs that gives us a false understanding of the potential outcomes.

Can you walk me through a campaign that “failed” on paper but taught you something invaluable about audiences or messaging?

We ran a campaign for a complex financial product optimized for classic performance metrics (leads). On paper, it was a disaster: the Cost-per-Lead (CPL) was far too high, and the campaign was stopped prematurely.

However, during the qualitative review and customer interviews, we discovered that the few leads generated were of extremely high quality, and their Lifetime Value (LTV) was fantastic. The lesson: chasing the cheapest lead often results in a flood of garbage. A high CPL is perfectly acceptable if the downstream quality is right. Since then, I always view front-end metrics with extreme suspicion.

Never forget, media and advertising should be measured on the real outcome and not on pseudo-KPIs that gives us a false understanding of the potential outcomes.

How has your own media consumption changed as you’ve learned more about how ads are made and targeted?

Advertising is part of the game and part of reality, which is why I consciously choose not to use ad blockers, VPNs, or premium ad-free subscriptions.

Many marketing and media decision-makers assume their target audiences consume media, perceive it, and even think about advertising exactly the way they do. All three assumptions are absolute nonsense. I frequently report on advertising fails I encounter personally in hopes of creating transparency.

Personally, my media behavior hasn’t changed much. However, I consistently refuse to participate in trends that I’ve disliked from the start.

What role do you think advertising should play in shaping culture? Should it reflect
values, challenge them, or stay out of that conversation entirely?

Today’s advertising often fails to clearly promote the actual product; instead it is frequently overloaded with cultural themes. Even to the point that I sometimes sit in front of a commercial and think, “I don’t get this at all” (to put it politely).

Advertising should, first and foremost, be honest. It can reflect and even challenge values, but only if it authentically aligns with the brand’s DNA. The best role advertising can play is to sell its product in an intelligent, entertaining, and honest way—without burdening society with toxic beauty ideals or excessive pressure to consume.

Machines understand patterns, but they do not understand human emotions, cultural nuances, or irrational needs.

With AI and automation doing more of the “grunt work,” what skills will define a great advertiser in the next decade?

“There is no AI without HI [Human Intelligence]” is one of my recurring quotes.

When machines take over bidding, targeting, and even creation, the human factor becomes all
the more critical. Three skills will be decisive:

1. Critical thinking and understanding systems. The ability to question the black box of algorithms—i.e. bullshit detection—and to recognize when the AI is optimizing for the wrong metrics, hallucinating, or simply wrong period.
2. Genuine empathy and psychology. Machines understand patterns, but they do not understand human emotions, cultural nuances, or irrational needs.
3. Strategic curation. The “how” of delivery will no longer be important; it will be about the “what” and the “why.” Those who ask the right questions and set the guardrails for AI will win. We need fewer button-pushers and more strategic architects. Unfortunately, these roles have been systematically eliminated in recent years due to the focus on “cheap media” and the “greed is good” frenzy.

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About Jonas Manthey