Everyone pretends marketing budget decisions are rational, backed by effectiveness studies and rigorous analysis. But that's performance, not reality. In practice, budgets get allocated based on what survives the red pen of finance people who neither know nor care about marketing theory - they just need confidence in the numbers.

This is why platforms won: not because their measurement is better, but because their numbers are simpler to defend. A CMO can show platform dashboards to the CFO and survive the quarterly review. The career risk of complex explanations is higher than the career risk of choosing slightly worse options that are easier to explain.

This presentation will discuss the sociology of corporate decision-making:

Why people choose legible mediocrity over harder-to-explain excellence

How siloed, contradictory KPIs and quarterly pressures shape media decisions

Why platform dashboards provide political cover ("data-driven" as defensive theatre)

The gap between what marketers believe works and what they can get approved

How to give finance teams the confidence they need without drowning in measurement minutiae

This isn't about what measurement systems say. It's about what survives contact with corporate incentive structures.