Now I know lots of folks in the industry are bashing the CTR right now, and it may seem like a trendy issue to some. But the truth is, the mere discussion of the CTR's proper place in digital campaigns is a sign of health: a sign that our industry is growing more ambitious as to what it can achieve through digital advertising.

Twas the week before Christmas, when alone in my house/ I was finishing shopping, with a click of the mouse;/Then I cleared out my browser cache, cookies deleted,/ In hopes of nefarious snooping, defeated.

Ever since the first display ad was shown back in 1995, marketers have been promised that digital advertising would make their jobs easier because everything would have more measurable ROI. Here we are almost 20 years later, and marketers are asking why we're not there yet.

Most marketers know that big data contains valuable information that, when used properly, can transform their marketing. The problem is that these large data sets are often unstructured and "noisy," and manually mining data to uncover patterns is often time-consuming, inaccurate, and can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. The outlook is not all bleak for marketers, however, and many are turning to predictive technologies to help reduce the noise and derive actionable insights from their data.

The fundamental role of analytics is to use data to gain insight and make decisions. But, like comparing fast food to a gourmet meal, there's a really broad menu of options for success. Analytics, when done well, is a wonderful combination of many different things: mastering the obvious, a few moments of clarity, great listening skills, connecting the dots, and some really smart strokes of insight and organization.