You can tell if it went up, but can you tell if it went up by a million views or two million?

Now yes I know metrics exist for this. But all those metrics are written based on data that's predominantly from a few of these large companies, and so expectations can be skewed.

Maybe Google has at least some competition in ads, even if nobody can touch that amount, but I can't see how you could reliably tell if Amazon isn't skimming your affiliate clicks.