The Ad Industry Is Lying to Itself: Why Your Dashboards Don't Match Your Bank Account with Matt Butler

The Ad Industry Is Lying to Itself: Why Your Dashboards Don't Match Your Bank Account with Matt Butler

From BizBlend by Sana and Avik Chakraborty - by Healthy Mind by Avik ™. All rights reserved.

May 8, 2026 · 29 min

About this episode

Sana discusses the discrepancies between marketing dashboards and actual revenue with Matt Butler, focusing on the concept of incrementality in advertising.

Meta says it drove the sale. Google says it drove the sale. TikTok says the same. Instagram does too. Your dashboards tell you marketing is winning, and your revenue chart says something quieter and harder to ignore. This BizBlend conversation is for founders, CEOs, and growth leaders who are tired of platform attribution that adds up to more than 100 percent and proves nothing. Host Sana sits down with Matt Butler, ex-Google analytics leader of twelve years and now co-founder and CEO of Bonsai, for a clear-headed conversation about what conversion data actually measures, why the ad systems are getting better at finding buyers without creating buyers, and the one word every founder needs in their vocabulary: incrementality. About the Guest: Matt Butler is the co-founder and CEO of Bonsai, a first-party marketing intelligence platform that automates profitable growth for B2C brands. A former Googler of twelve years, Matt was a founding member of Google's analytical consulting team, building measurement and machine learning frameworks for companies like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Kohl's, and Best Buy. He launched Bonsai in 2020 to solve the problem he watched the…

People in this episode

Host: Sana

Guest: Matt Butler

Topics covered

  • conversion metrics
  • advertising
  • marketing
  • data analysis
  • business growth
  • platform attribution

Keywords

  • ad industry
  • marketing attribution
  • conversion data
  • incrementality
  • B2C brands
  • first-party marketing
  • revenue measurement

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Meta, Google, TikTok, Instagram, Bonsai, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Kohl's, Best Buy

More episodes of BizBlend

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the BizBlend podcast page.