Sponsored by TRUSTe.

The immense quantity of data yielded by people's online behavior is one of the great forces shaping media and marketing. It is pushing analytics and precise targeting to the forefront of communications. Where does it leave the creatives and strategists associated with a more broad-brush, qualitative approach? Tom Morton surveys how the Poets of the communications industry are learning from the Quants, and how that data can fuel a more creative approach.

Data, data everywhere, but which drop to drink? The volume and variety of data coming from online, offline, new platforms, and ever-changing notions of engagement and campaign success are more than overwhelming. They can be paralyzing. We ask some of the top planners in the business to share their practical lessons, policies and practices for keeping data in its place so they can craft strategies that are informed by these resources without being handcuffed by them. What data points are they valuing most, and which are just noise? How are they evaluating the ROI of data so campaigns are not eaten away by the incremental costs of every targeting layer? And in the end, is this stuff really working to make campaigns more effective and efficient?

This OMMA event asks the tough questions. "Are data security, consumer control, and privacy poised to derail the data train just as it leaves the station?" Marc Groman, Executive Director of NAI, has an optimistic answer -- the data train has left the station and won't be derailed as long as those driving the train stay alert, pay attention to signals, and don't forget their responsibilities to all the passengers on the train. Groman believes there's a bright future for the dynamic online advertising ecosystem.  This future involves effective self-regulation, transparency around rapidly-evolving business models, and engagement with all stakeholders, including policy makers, privacy advocates, advertisers, and consumers.

As data gets “bigger” so does the visibility and ubiquity of digital tracking in everyday life. The FTC came down hard on Facebook and Google in recent months over their respective privacy practices. Mobile carriers scrambled to address controversy over Carrier IQ. And despite the ongoing roll-out of industry self-regulation in behavioral ad targeting, the FTC is behind instituting a “Do Not Track” option and eliminating even anonymous data collection of children’s online activities. Data collection has outgrown the early controversies surrounding behavioral targeting. Every emerging platform brings with it a new concern and a larger threat of regulation. Are marketers getting behind the curve of this issue?

Everyone agrees that “attribution” of marketing spend is the next big challenge for digital marketers and likely a target for solutions providers in 2012. Getting beyond “last click attribution” is the persistent chant of the past year and everyone’s marching orders for 2012. But who is really modeling effectively the complex impact of offline efforts with online campaigns, branding, earned media, social outreach and search? We ask some of the attributions gurus among the major agencies to shares their latest cures for last-click addiction and the problems of moving media planning toward a more holistic view of digital marketing.

What time of day do people want recipes? Do leftover recipes perform better than Thanksgiving recipes?  What's the value of a retargeting cookie pool?  A look at how brand marketers are leveraging first and third party data to drive advertising performance.

For a decade behavioral targeting has been about identifying immediate and near-term intent and “stalking” those in-market customers with targeted ads. But today’s “big data” combined with post-desktop devices aim higher. With inputs coming from offline, social and mobile sources, companies are modeling for what their customers need next month, next year, at a given place and at a specific time. Predictive analytics promises to change businesses from reactive to proactive entities that anticipate needs even before consumers now they have them. For consumers, this new use of big data can be shaped and delivered in ways that turn “creepy behavioral tracking” into welcome valets, helpful services that filter opportunities on this street right now with their master’s needs tastes and wants.

Why do Academy Award winners live longer than the other nominees, and first basemen outlive other players on the team? Why do children in schools with fluorescent lighting get fewer cavities than those in incandescent-lit schools? The universe is full of non-obvious causal relationships invisible to both the eye and intuition. How might a sophisticated computational answer engine of the future help us find these relationships and thereby cure disease, end poverty, and usher in a new golden age for humanity? Moore's Law, big data, and cheap sensors will bring about this great new future. Now, why does this matter to companies today? Because it is actionable today. We start by looking at new kinds of data in behavioral targeting, how we can roll in new data sources such as real-time weather, concepts trending in Twitter, etc. In other words, think of accessible data sources that might not have traditionally been used to target audiences. Everything is connected to everything else in the world of information, we just have to figure out the relationships

How much is that social network connection worth to an advertiser? Does a customer’s social graph really identify your next most likely lead as well as traditional behavioral targeting? Several years ago, a wave of social data targeting companies emerged with clever algorithms that claimed to weave the morass of Facebook, Twitter, blog and other profile and activity data into ad gold? But has any model for leveraging social data really stood out after all? Are we any closer now than we were three years ago in knowing what social data adds to the targeting stack and when this layer does and doesn’t make sense for which brands?  We bring in some of the veteran social data number crunchers to hash out who does what well here and what key differentiators, if any, have merged in this hot market.