• by Bill Wise , July 26, 2011

From the looks of things, the media industry is fairly accepting of the immeasurable.

Take CNN. The news company just announced that it's putting its entire TV lineup on the Web and on mobile devices -- even though Nielsen, the third-party measurement vendor CNN (and a good chunk of the rest of the industry) uses to track viewers, doesn't measure mobile inventory. For now, CNN bets that "the promise of a very large audience" will attract mobile ad dollars -- and the measurement tools will follow.

Similar thinking comes from the agencies. Razorfish's Mobile Practice Lead, Paul Gelb, has predicted that mobile ad budgets will overtake TV spend within just a few years -- even if the industry is still working out details on mobile measurement. Given the astronomical growth rates of mobile ad spend, it looks like Gelb is on to something: measurement difficulties haven't kept mobile from growing very fast. As Jason Young, founder of mobile ad network Smart Device Media (and former CEO of Ziff Davis Media) once put it: "I've met a ton of marketers who are waiting for mobile analytics to get where it should be -- but that isn't stopping them from putting serious spend behind mobile ads."

Making peace with a lack of numbers goes beyond mobile. TV executives are jumping into Twitter without Twitter's direct impact on ratings points. Facebook is the new leader in digital ad display spend -- even though we still haven't pinned down the funnel form social media spend to sales. At every corner of the newest media, advertisers and networks are launching into new channels first, waiting for the results-oriented analytics to be fully baked later.

Does this mean we're turning a collective blind eye on measurement gaps? Not in the least. What it means is that the industry understands the tremendous value, and the sheer size, of new media audiences. It also understands, as Digitas CEO Laura Lang said so well, that "when these new channels emerge, it takes a while for the metrics to catch up." Given the massive opportunity cost of staying on the sidelines, the only real option is to dive into the new media and work through the metrics problems in tandem.

What all of this means is that the new reality we're facing is one in which we continually need to craft new analytics models, quickly, for channels we've never seen. There are a lot of incredibly smart people thinking through the issue (including the people I've quoted above); at the risk of speaking out of turn, I'll offer my own thoughts to the chorus on how that's done:

1) Look for parallels to existing models Back when I was CEO of a search marketing firm, some of our top analytics talent came with a very strong direct mail background. They adapted quickly from traditional media analytics into digital because they understood how much of what's new is really old -- it's just a matter of finding the parallels.

2) Look for hidden sources of untapped data When you can't understand the full picture through front-end data, look for data on the back end. You'd be stunned how much leverage MediaBank's clients get by intelligently mining their spend information.

3) Lead a creative organization There's a reason Google offers 20% time and 3M created its predecessor, 15% time. Giving employees free rein to think as widely outside of the box as possible fosters the creativity the company needs to evolve quickly in a changing world.

It will be amazing when we can all build out perfect measurement on every new model within just a few months. But until that happens, I think my suggestions ring true. Folks with more ideas can comment below.

Or share your thoughts with tweets. I'll be counting up the @billwise mentions -- even if I can't tie them back to sales just yet.