An empty calorie is defined as a calorie with little to no nutritional value, in food this is usually found in things that are high in fat, sugar, or processed. In marketing, we call these “vanity metrics.” Like many things in marketing, what was once a rare mineral for your team or brand becomes an Oscar Meyer Cheese Hot Dog overnight.

From “Likes” to “Views”: The First Empty Calories

Occasionally a cheese dog isn’t going to kill you but it isn’t something you can live on, nor can your business. Much like the cheese dog, the first crop of empty marketing calories was obvious. Measurements such as “likes” which in the nascent days of Facebook were both revelatory and impactful. That quickly gave way to “likes” being a measurement that was the very last on your list because it didn’t result in campaign success. The next empty calorie was a “video view,” as the modern internet moved to consume as much video as it currently does the “view” was another obvious metric but this one was sneaky as it turned out the platforms would measure a video view as just three seconds – which is about as empty a calorie as you could find. Joining the empty calorie line-up after that were impressions, like video views it measured that your content was served not consumed.

As an example, go into your TikTok watch history and you will see plenty of videos you don’t remember watching that would be label as both an impression and a video view.

The Modern Empty Calorie: Web Traffic

Which brings us to the modern era and an empty calorie you did not see coming. Web Traffic. In the era of AI ChatGPT alone get s 18 billion messages a week, Google serves AI overviews for 50% of hundreds of billions of searches each month. This is equating to you seeing as much as a 60% drop in organic traffic. Why?

They already got the information they needed from AI or an AI summary, why do they need to go to your site?

To compound this issue Open AI, the parent company of ChatGPT, has created a partnership with Etsy and Shopify just in time for the fourth quarter that will allow consumers to purchase straight from inside ChatGPT. Now imagine a world where Google follows suit and allows the AI summaries to work tandem with the shopping tab or with a Walmart or Amazon and the game becomes not which search engine do you use but what large language model (LLM) makes your life better?

What Should You Measure Now?

“So, what does your brand measure if web traffic is an empty calorie? Start thinking of your site differently: saved itineraries, newsletter sign-ups, referral clicks to booking engines, repeat visits, engagement with planning tools, or conversion metrics like tickets, room nights, and packages.

But here’s the real question:

Are you measuring what matters, or are you still counting cheese dogs?

The brands that will thrive aren’t the ones clinging to vanity metrics or mourning the loss of organic traffic. They’re the ones who recognized this shift early and built direct relationships with their audience. Because when AI can answer questions and facilitate purchases without ever sending someone to your website, the only competitive advantage left is the audience that chooses to engage with you anyway.

That’s not an empty calorie. That’s the whole meal.”