The metrics used to trade advertising and to measure delivery of content (aka stories) are becoming less and less correlated to what people are actually paying attention to. This is because vanity metrics that are poorly defined – like “views” or “impressions” – are propped up in order to keep advertising prices low.

The difference in margin between e-commerce and advertising has become a much bigger story than Amazon: everyone from Uber to Walmart to Instacart is pushing into ‘merchant media’, and hiring at scale