In 1740, a merchant ship vanished rounding Cape Horn.

Another widow left penniless on Edinburgh's docks. Another family destroyed.

But from tragedy came genius.

Scottish mathematicians started counting corpses. Parish records. Death certificates. Row after agonising row. They discovered something remarkable: they couldn't predict which sailor would drown, but they could predict exactly how many would.

One sailor's fate? Chaos. Ten thousand sailors? A mathematical curve.

By 1815, the Scottish Widows Fund turned this insight into the insurance industry we know today.

We've had this 300-year-old lesson staring us in the face, yet digital advertising keeps chasing the opposite dream.

We're obsessed with predicting the individual. Which person. Which click. Which microsecond.

But what if we're solving the wrong problem?

We're so seduced by the idea of "zero waste" that we've created maximum waste:

Tiny audiences are sliced so thin they disappear.

Consumers feel stalked, not served.

Too much focus on the targeting, not the creative

And to be frank, ineffective advertising with probabilistic targeting sold as deterministic.

The best targeting in the world can't save bad creative. But great creative finds its audience.

P&G's Marc Pritchard said it best a few years ago: "We targeted too much and reached too few."

They went back to broad reach. Sales went up. Costs went down.

We're addicted to the fantasy of perfect prediction, but here’s what actually drives results:

Reaching enough people to matter. Creative that earns attention. Measuring real business impact (not clicks).

Insurance companies don't try to predict if YOU'LL crash your car. They know 3.2% of drivers in your postcode will. That's enough.

So why do we think we can predict if Sarah from Sheffield will buy trainers at 2:47pm on Tuesday?

Scottish Widows published their solvency ratios in newspapers. Full transparency in 1744. Meanwhile, we hide our targeting criteria like nuclear codes.

Maybe it's time to admit what actuaries learned three centuries ago:

Perfect prediction is a perfect waste of money.