In an effort to maximize conversion rates, today's online marketers take advantage of myriad channels and ad types to reach their customers. They also employ a number of cross-channel strategies to reach users at more moments of purchase consideration, increasing awareness and the probability of conversion -- but that also makes managing and optimizing campaigns increasingly complex. This leads advertisers to wonder, "How much is too much?" That question is answered by attribution-based overlap reporting.

To paraphrase the tagline used in commercials by Ally Bank: "Even children know it takes more than a single ad to convert a prospect." When optimizing online campaigns, the overwhelming majority of advertisers still credit only the last ad event that occurred prior to the conversion. That last event is typically in the form of exposure to a display banner or a click on a paid search link. This is usually referred to as the 'last ad' model. Some advertisers will only attribute credit to an ad if it was clicked - the 'last click' model. It's no wonder, then, …

For those of you thinking about attribution management solutions, one of the most important things to know before beginning your evaluation process is that marketing attribution measurement will significantly change the practice of marketing within your organization. Unlike other technologies, attribution is not just a piece of software that sits in a corner and is pulled out every now and then to solve a specific issue or meet an ad hoc need. It's a tool that you will live and breathe with every day. But even the easiest to learn, use and navigate attribution software will need to be operationalized …

Every day new facts, findings, figures, and pronouncements fill my inbox. However, very few insights make it there. So many studies, so much data and so many findings abound, but it seems that it's hard to boil it all down into truly useful intelligence. Even when the findings and figures appear to have been collected using appropriate methodologies, more often than not, my reaction is "This is really interesting -- but what does it mean?"

For the last decade hyper-local ads were the next big thing. Today, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and a maturing mobile marketplace, advertisers can reach consumers with a level of location granularity that enables a new form of storytelling. These types of campaigns are now real, but understanding the nuances of location data and the privacy implications are key to running a successful campaign. To understand these nuances, we have suggested four questions you should ask to make the most of hyper-local and mobile marketing opportunities.

The uncertainty about the future of Facebook has a lot to do with the uncertainty about its metrics.  If “social” -- the mentions of brands and recommendations from friends and companies --  is indeed the future of the online advertising business, it is about time we come up with media-like standard metrics to plan and evaluate social advertising.  Although there’s no shortage of measurement companies in social media, such standards are yet to emerge.  The increased curiosity of marketers about social networking gave birth to hundreds of "listening" research vendors that perfected the art of monitoring discussion volumes and delivering …

On average, most CMOs hold that job for less than two years.. Ever wonder why? A major contributing factor is the lack of fact-based decision-making. Organizations of all sizes, all around the world, are coming to realize that without data at the core of their operational decisions, they are left at the hands of intuitive decision-making. That's why I'm stating now, definitively: Data will save the CMO.

August is already nearly half gone, and we are inching our way to the traditional back-to-school season while clinging to the last gasps of summer fun. The parallel to digital media is not entirely obvious, but it has been a summer filled with all manner of change. Some of the changes are just bubbling up. They are already beginning to force all of us back to school; we've got a lot of learning to do! Herewith a compendium of summer activities bringing change our way -- some totally "inside baseball," to borrow a summer metaphor, and others less so.

An attribution solution with funnel stage reporting helps marketers understand the complete purchase journey, whether it is entirely online or includes offline channels. These reports simplify the traditional AIDA purchase funnel definitions into three main stages: introducer, promoter and closer. The introducer aligns with the awareness stage; and the closer, the action stage. The promoter stage represents all the middle funnel activity such as interest, evaluation and consideration.

When an organization engages in marketing attribution it knowingly or unknowingly makes the decision to build an enterprise marketing data warehouse within the database platform of its attribution provider of choice. Often this is the first time that such a repository is being created for the company's benefit, and the first time that most of the enterprise-level decisions/rules surrounding that data are being established. Though on the surface this may seem like a painful process, the most experienced attribution modeling providers have this process down to a streamlined, template-driven process that delivers great benefits to their clients beyond their attribution …