Asked from London

By the middle of June the comments under a Gulf brand's ads start to read differently.

The replies arrive at odd hours. A question comes in at four in the morning Riyadh time from somebody who is clearly awake and unhurried. Under a delivery offer, one asks whether it can be sent to London. Under a booking post, another asks whether the same price will still be there in September. A regular who used to answer inside an hour goes quiet for a fortnight, then leaves three comments in one evening.

None of that reaches the dashboard.

The location report in an advertising account describes where the ads went, not where the people are. It is a report on delivery. If the targeting says Riyadh and Jeddah, the account will say Riyadh and Jeddah in July with exactly the confidence it had in April, because it can only count the places it was allowed to reach. The audience did not move on the map. It moved at the airport.

So the account keeps reporting a city that a good part of its customers have left, at a cost per result that looks stable because the people still being reached are the ones who stayed. Then September arrives and reads as a surprise.

The comment thread is the only report in the account that knows where the customer is. It does not get read as data, because it does not arrive as a number.