Glossary
Target versus measured
Target versus measured is the rule that every number in an outbound program carries a status, either designed-for or read, and that a target is never shown as a result.
An outbound program is full of numbers that sound like results and are not. Sixty a day per mailbox is what the system is built to reach; it is not what any mailbox did this week. Mixing the two is how every agency deck is written, and it is why nobody believes them.
In outbound engineering, each number has a status. Measured numbers carry the source they were read from and the date. Targets are drawn hatched and marked as targets. On this site the rule is enforced by the build: copy cannot type a digit, every figure comes from a proof file, and a target can only appear inside an element that says it is one.
The same rule runs on the shared board. What the client sees is what was read, and what has not been read yet says so.
Questions
What happens when a target is measured?
It stops being a target. The proof entry gets a source and a date, the tile turns solid, and the research post that published the reading is linked from it.
Related terms and pages
This term belongs to the outbound engineering glossary. The practice is defined on the category page.
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