mattfm

There is some evidence that big companies (e.g. Ebay) were not wisely spending millions of dollars on Google search ads.

Blake, Nosko & Tadelis, 2015. "Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large‐Scale Field Experiment," Econometrica.

https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/nbrnberwo/20171.htm

I'm sure the landscape has changed since then in terms of there being more accountability (better tools to measure things like ROAI and mgmt demanding stronger evidence of marketing efficacy).

"Graphics like these need to be read closely and carefully. Only then can we grasp what they're really saying."

A cone showing the likely paths of the storm's eye seems like the incorrect graphic to communicate to the public. The public cares about how much rain and wind they are going to get. The take-away to me is that maybe we should just emphasize maps of expected cumulative rainfall and wind speed, and not present something that is uninformative (or prone to misinterpretation) to begin with.