In 2012, Google launched a brilliant campaign in view of SXSW.

Project Re:Brief wanted to give old school admen, creators of iconic ads (such as this, and this, and this), modern tools to see how their campaigns would look like on the web.

It is a wonderful idea, and the campaign got very good numbers. Google also made a documentary out of this project.

A few days after the launch, one of the people responsible for the campaign was presenting the social media results to the rest of the team. Their boss, perhaps a bit harshly, asked an important question (the full story can be heard here):

Does it matter?

The point is, Google can certainly spend time and resources tracking and reporting on things that do not have an impact on their mission, vision, numbers.

But can you?