Methodology
Every definition below is followed by a limitation. Some of them are unflattering. They are here because a measurement you cannot interrogate is not a measurement, and because you should be able to decide whether to trust a number before you act on it.
Net food and bar sales recorded by the POS inside the show window, divided by the number of tickets scanned at the door. Both halves are measured. Neither is estimated.
LimitationThis counts everyone the bar served, not only the people who came for the band. A regular who was already at the bar when doors opened is in the numerator and not in the denominator, which pushes the figure up. On a night with heavy non-show trade the number will read higher than the show alone earned.
Doors open to the last order rung in that night. Taken from the doors time recorded in the ticketing platform and the final order timestamp in the POS.
LimitationWhen no doors time has been entered for a show, we do not fall back to the showtime, and we do not assume a standard hour before it. The measurement does not run at all. This means an operator who forgets to set doors gets nothing rather than something approximate.
The count of tickets actually scanned at the door. This is the denominator for every per-head figure in the product.
LimitationIf the door does not scan, there is no attendance figure and nothing downstream renders. We will not substitute tickets sold. Sold and attended routinely differ by a wide margin, and every venue we have looked at differs by a different margin, so there is no correction factor worth applying.
A ticket order that arrived through a tagged referral link belonging to a specific channel. The tag is read from the order record in the ticketing platform.
LimitationThis measures tagged sales, not all sales the ad caused. Someone who sees the ad, searches the venue name, and buys direct is a real ad-driven sale that carries no tag and is not counted. Our verified figure is therefore a floor, not a total, and we will not present it as a total.
The share of a show’s orders that arrived carrying any referral tag at all.
LimitationThis is the honest denominator for reading the gap between what an ad platform claims and what we verified. A large gap can mean the platform is over-claiming, or it can mean the links were not tagged. Without coverage beside it, the gap is not evidence of either.
Ad spend restricted to the same dates as the verified sales it is compared against.
LimitationThis is usually less than the campaign’s lifetime spend, and it will not match the total in your ad account. That is deliberate. Dividing weeks of spend by days of tracked sales produces a confident ratio that is wrong, and it is wrong in the flattering direction.
Two separate figures, stored in two separate fields and always labelled. Cost per ticket divides windowed spend by verified tickets. Cost per order divides it by verified orders.
LimitationAd platforms report on a purchase basis, which is orders. Comparing our per-ticket figure to a platform’s per-purchase figure compares two different things and will make us look better than we are. The per-order figure exists so the honest comparison is always available.
What the ad platform reports it produced, carried through unaltered and always labelled as the platform’s claim.
LimitationWe do not correct it, adjust it, or blend it with the verified figure. It sits beside the verified count so the difference is visible. We also do not assert that the difference is the platform inflating — a difference is unexplained until tag coverage says which explanation it supports.
Verified ticket revenue plus the bar spend attributable to ad-driven attendees, divided by windowed ad spend.
LimitationThis is revenue, not margin. Cost of goods on food and drink is not sourced anywhere in this pipeline, so this figure cannot be a contribution number and is never labelled as one. Wherever it renders, that disclosure renders with it.
Any figure whose inputs do not cover the same dates. Any per-head without a measured attendance. Any ratio with a missing or zero divisor. Any value carried forward from a previous show.
LimitationThese render as a named reason and the specific action that would resolve it, not as a zero, a dash, or a plausible-looking placeholder. A zero is a measurement. An absence is not, and the two must never look alike.
If a definition here does not match what the product renders, the product is wrong and we want to know. This page is maintained alongside the calculation code, not written about it afterwards.
Back to overview