Great point. Jumping to pre-mature conclusions is certainly an easy mistake to make.

During the Obama campaign we were frustrated by having to wait 24 - 48 hours to get results for our experiments. We were lucky to be getting a ton of traffic and hence be able to get statistically significant results in just a few days.

Another big benefit of real-time results is helping our customers answer the question "is this working correctly?" Seeing the data come in in real-time helps reassure folks that the tool is working properly and collecting data.