Every number carries its own receipt.
Three tiers, three marks. A figure we counted does not look like a figure we estimated, and neither looks like a figure a platform handed us. You should be able to tell which is which from across the room — before you read a word.
Solid, hatched, dotted. Square, rule, and figure shape all move together — a mark is never decorative.
We counted it ourselves.
A placement we saw with our own scan, on a named date. No interpolation, no vendor feed. If the count is wrong, it is our fault and we can show you the run.
We show our exact maths, source and all.
Built from a third-party ad library's own spend estimate. The Meta rate is now an observed CPM, weighted by real impressions across four live campaigns from one advertiser, not a chosen constant -- every other channel's rate is still ours, chosen without a live campaign to check it against. It's net media cost only: platform, tech and data fees are not included.
The platform said so. We did not check.
Useful, and borrowed. Start dates, disclosure labels, advertiser names. We pass it through unchanged and mark it, so its weight is never mistaken for ours.
We looked. There was nothing there.
A solid cell holding a real zero. This is a finding — it survives a client meeting, and you can build an argument on it. Absence, counted and dated.
■ Solid border · full-strength figure · timestamp attached
We haven't looked. Don't read this as zero.
A dashed cell holding an em dash. There may be a great deal of activity here — we simply cannot see it yet. Rendering this as a zero would be the single most damaging thing the product could do.
□ Dashed border · em dash, never a digit · no timestamp to give
A gap we've named is worth more than a number we've guessed.
This list grows before it shrinks. When we start scanning a channel, the row stops being dashed and starts carrying dates — and we say so on the day it changes, not in a quarterly note.
If it can't be marked, it doesn't ship.
A metric that can't say where it came from has no place on the page. We leave the slot open and label the refusal, rather than filling it with a plausible-looking figure that nobody can defend.