• by March 23, 2011

Universal tagging -- the attempt to rein in and unify all the tags and tracking pixels now attached to content into one tag across multiple media and platforms -- was a hot topic at OMMA Metrics on Wednesday morning.

Determined to move universal tagging forward, IBM will soon put out a universal tag designed to be "universal architecture," Yuchun Lee, vice president and general manager of IBM's Enterprise Marketing Management Group, declared in his keynote address.

"It's important to tag all social media campaigns," commented John Lovett, senior partner and principal consultant of Web Analytics Demystified, during a subsequent panel on social media measurement.

Then a panel on multichannel measurement debated the tagging issue.

Jodi McDermott, senior director of product management for comScore, said there's a "fine line between tagging everything under the sun -- going tag crazy -- and staying focused." But Eugene Becker, director of Media Innovation Group, believes: "We do want to tag everything, so that the data is available should we want to do something (with it)."

Luane Kohnke, senior VP and managing director of analytics and accountability at R/GA, added that a good method is to start out tagging everything and "reduce the tags over time." Yet Chris Brinkworth, CMO of TagMan, a pioneer in universal tagging, pointed out that "there are some things you can't tag, like competitive activity."