Retention curves speak louder than downloads. Compare day‑one return, week‑one depth, and month‑one resilience across acquisition sources to identify promise versus promotion. When cohorts retain despite minimal nudging, you have evidence of product‑market fit strong enough to forecast sustained, compounding demand.
Instrument events that ladder to value: search executed, list viewed, variant compared, cart created, payment tokenized, order tracked, support resolved. Stream them with timestamps to measure time‑to‑value and friction points. Small reductions in dead ends often unlock startling leaps in lifetime outcomes.
Respect people and regulations. Design consent flows that are plain, revocable, and generous. Favor aggregated, de‑identified reporting where possible, and document retention windows. Align with platform policies so insights endure. Responsible stewardship builds trust, keeps data flowing, and shields hard‑won gains from preventable setbacks.

Not every spike is excitement. Screen for known bot networks, suspect autonomous systems, repeated user‑agents, and impossible interaction tempos. Overlay server logs with vendor fingerprints and apply unsupervised anomaly detection to isolate campaign artifacts from genuine interest emerging organically within real communities.

Attribution is powerful storytelling, yet illusions creep in. Last‑click favors harvesters, while mix models smooth away breakthrough sparks. Blend approaches, honor lag between exposure and action, and track incrementality through holdouts so budgets follow true contribution instead of convenient arithmetic.

Stability invites courage. Maintain baselines that contextualize weekly pulses, nowcast with fresh signals to steer near‑term moves, and forecast confidently with scenarios. Incorporate promotions, weather, and macro indicators, then publish uncertainty bands so leaders act decisively without pretending tomorrow is guaranteed.