How we choose and verify marketing statistics

A statistics page is only useful if you can trust every number on it. Most "marketing statistics" pages copy each other, and figures drift a little with every copy until nobody can say where they came from. This hub works the other way round: every number is a record tied to the page it came from, and a number that cannot be checked does not appear.

What counts as a source

• Primary sources are the organisations that ran the survey, own the platform or published the dataset: platform newsrooms and help centres, the company behind an annual report, industry bodies, regulators and government statisticians, and company investor filings.
• Reputable secondary sources are established compilers that publish their methods, such as DataReportal. Stats from them are labelled "Secondary source".
• Never used: statistics roundups and listicles, content farms, AI-generated compilations, other "statistics" pages, and paywalled or gated figures. When a number only appears on a roundup, we trace it back to its origin. If the origin cannot be found and opened, the number is dropped.
• Gated reports are used only when the number also appears on a public page, such as the report's press release or landing page, and we link to that public page.

How each stat is recorded

Every stat stores the organisation, the report or page title, the exact URL, when the source was published, the year the data describes, the geography, and a short verbatim quote from the source containing the number. The wording you read on the page is ours; the quote is kept only as evidence and is never published.

How verification works

• A script opens every source URL, follows redirects, reads the page text (including PDFs and pages that need JavaScript) and checks that the quoted text is really there and contains the number.
• Only stats that pass are shown. If a source moves, changes or disappears, the stat stops appearing until it is fixed.
• Where a page cannot be read automatically, a stat can be checked by hand, and that check is logged with a note.
• Every stat shows the year its data describes. Data from two or more years before the page's last review is marked "Older data", and data more than five years old appears only as labelled historical context.
• When credible sources disagree, we show both and explain the difference, usually method, sample or geography, rather than picking the more flattering figure.

How often it is refreshed

Sources are rechecked every week, and every page is re-verified each quarter: broken links are fixed, new editions of annual reports replace older figures (older figures stay visible under "Previous years"), and gaps are filled from primary sources. The year in a page title changes only when that page has actually been re-verified.

Linking and citing

Every stat has its own link. Use the link icon on any stat to copy a direct link, or "Copy citation" to copy the stat with its original source and a link back here. Please cite the original source as well as this page.

Report an error

If a number looks wrong, a link is broken or a newer edition exists, please tell us through the contact page or at contact@mynameiskalam.com, with the page and the stat link. Corrections are made as soon as they are checked.