Dieter Matzion, a seasoned cloud practitioner, discusses the importance of managing custom metrics in Datadog to ensure they provide true business value while staying within budgetary constraints. As organizations grow, proactive governance and cost awareness become crucial, and aligning finance with engineering is essential for effective cloud cost management. Matzion emphasizes the role of unit economics in linking custom metrics usage to revenue-driving or cost-saving activities, creating a shared language between technical and financial stakeholders. He highlights how Datadog's tools, such as standardized metric-naming conventions and the Metrics without Limits feature, can help reduce unnecessary volumes and optimize custom metrics by excluding unused tags. By doing so, organizations can enhance observability and maintain efficient monitoring practices. Matzion also notes the importance of tracking overall spend trends to catch abnormalities early and suggests holding regular finance reviews to address budget issues.