Marketing evidence
MICHVI uses "marketing evidence" for information relied upon when a business reaches a conclusion or makes a decision involving marketing. The term describes the role that information plays, not the system or source it comes from.
Use, not source
Nothing about a figure's origin or format makes it marketing evidence in this sense. The same number can sit in very different places and mean exactly what it meant before.
Take a cost-per-lead figure in a routine campaign report. There, it is simply one reported measure. Suppose the same figure is later cited in a paper asking for additional budget. The number has not changed. What has changed is that it is now being relied upon in support of a decision, and that role is what MICHVI's use of the term refers to.
The term carries no judgement about the information itself. It names what the information is being used for.
Evidence is not proof
Calling information evidence does not make it conclusive. Evidence can count in favour of a conclusion without settling it, and something learned later can still change the picture.1
This is the sense in which the term is used in the MICHVI Evidence Assessment, an independent assessment of the evidence relied upon for a defined consequential decision.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Evidence