Novelty detection
A spike is not automatically a breakthrough.
An anomaly is evidence that something differs from the expected pattern. It is not, by itself, an explanation for why the difference occurred or whether it is good, bad, organic, manipulated, or durable.
Detection context
Historical baseline
How unusual is the current value for this creator, metric, format, and lifecycle stage?
Related signals
Do adjacent metrics move in a way that supports the same event or contradicts it?
Timing structure
Is the activity concentrated in an unusual temporal pattern or periodic structure?
Source provenance
Did a new provider, traffic source, campaign, or reporting path appear at the same time?
Signal Integrity
Does the evidence itself show structural conditions that should lower trust?
Persistence
Does the anomaly survive after the initial period, or revert immediately to baseline?
Anomaly detection should open an investigation, not close one.
A sudden increase may reflect genuine discovery, paid exposure, source-mix change, reporting correction, coordinated behavior, or another event. WITNESS uses the anomaly as a reason to compare explanations rather than as proof of one.
Not every anomaly deserves attention.
WITNESS Watches can apply materiality thresholds so normal variance and low-value noise do not constantly interrupt the creator. Novelty becomes useful when it is both unusual and decision-relevant.
Anomaly is the trigger, not the conclusion.