TV advertising has lagged behind cutting-edge advancements in digital and social media, but that's quickly changing. And data is the driver behind the oncoming shift in television. The question is, what does this all mean for today's TV networks, MVPDs and advertisers? Here are a few lessons we can draw from the transformations brought by the Internet

We're entering a new era in which ordinary objects can be connected to the Internet using sensors and controllers. Such advanced connectivity, often referred to by the buzz phrase "Internet of Things," is reshaping the way consumers interact with brands, and vice versa.So how will advanced connectivity impact marketing measurement and optimization?

Consumers generate an enormous amount of transaction and interaction data when they research, buy, and discuss products and services. The challenge, however, is that approximately 80% of this data is "unstructured," which is data that can't be easily analyzed via traditional and established methods. Digital ad agencies are giving Hadoop, a free technology tool, a starring role in this scenario, since it can be used to capture and analyze this mountain of information by ingesting data from a multitude of sources, such as Web clickstream, video, social media and transactional systems

As marketers look to extract the most useful insight from their data to enhance targeting and campaign performance, there's an under-leveraged metric that they should consider: velocity. Recency and frequency have been important targeting levers for digital marketers for quite some time. Frequency is a good indication of general interest, and recency indicates that someone is in the buying cycle. But velocity goes one step farther, letting you drill down deeper to gauge the shifts in a prospect's interest level.

Wall Street investors call it "momentum investing": the strategy of placing bets on trends already taking shape, in the assumption that those trends are likely to continue and influence events moving forward. It's a concept that could help divine the direction of media and advertising. Current ad expenditure trends serve as a valid basis in applying "momentum investing" theory to media. Ad money being spent today will undoubtedly influence what is likely to occur moving forward. So using the most recent full year data on U.S. ad expenditure from Kantar Media, what does the concept of "momentum investing" suggest about …

The two highest grossing in-store and online shopping days of the year are just around the corner. Last year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday wrapped up with record online sales, supported by strong growth in mobile use by consumers. Going into 2014, these critical selling days can make or break a brand's financial performance for the entire year. However, consumers behave differently during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday period than they do at other times of the year. So how can marketers use the latest metrics to adapt to this changing behavior?

It is Fashion Week in New York City. And, to coincide with this whirlwind marketplace of fashion, the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence just released "Fashion on Phones: Mobile Readiness of the Women's Wear Daily Top 100 Brands." Stunningly, the research found that a full 17% of the top 100 fashion brands do not have a mobile-optimized website. That 17% includes brands that regularly grace the pages of Vogue and Elle, such as Versace and DKNY, as well as those that are mainstays of fashion, like American Apparel, Reebok and Danskin.

These days, all marketers (and plenty of tech companies) are talking about attribution, and with good reason. Every CFO wants to know how digital advertising expenditures translate into new revenue earned. But that begs the question: What's new revenue? If your digital advertising initiatives target consumers who would convert anyway, is that revenue really new? More importantly, if you could focus your ad dollars on consumers who are more likely to be influenced by them, how much more revenue would you see?

Are you in a bad relationship with your attribution model? There may be several issues at play here, from the cost of using more data to the time it takes to put together a good content strategy for a data-driven marketing campaign. One of the largest problems actually has to do with a bad habit we have as an industry: the use of last-click attribution methodologies to measure performance.

Every brand, agency and vendor involved in marketing is talking about data, but the uncomfortable truth is that a lot of people are bragging to save face. Like high school hallway gossip, everyone is talking, everyone thinks others are doing exciting things with big data, but the truth is that most people in the industry are still trying to figure it all out. Many lack even a basic understanding of this data, much less the terms used to describe it.