While I see your point, please note people actually spending money don't just look at how much money is in the industry. They have internal metrics and can track performance of individual marketing campaigns. I called it a baseline argument because I'm not a marketing expert so this it the only real KPI __I__ understand.
My argument is that you are not alone: people in the industry don't have much else to go on either.
Marketing performance is an incredibly confoundable variable.
For example, I have heard one commercial at least 5 times in the last week: advertising open positions at McDonald's. Part of that very commercial stated that, "1 in 8 people have worked at a McDonald's." I am literally one of those people! How could anyone possibly measure the effectiveness of that commercial? Is it even meant to be effective at all?
The overwhelming majority of advertising I see is from "household name brands". The notion I have heard is that the goal is not to introduce themselves to new customers, or even drive more traffic to their brand: it's to keep their status as a "household name". Do they do this because it is effective, or because they are simply big enough to afford it?
