• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, August 19, 2014

Beyond the goldmine that is location-based data, mobile remains a remarkably difficult channel for advertisers to track, and property attribute value. That was the general consensus from a panel of analytics pros at OMMA’s Mobile Insider Summit, on Tuesday. Among other problems, “The attribution aspect [is] new,” said Rahul Bafna, VP Product at Drawbridge, an ad tech startup with a focus on cross-device marketing. No “attribution story” means it’s still really hard to show clients what impact their mobile strategy is having, said Lauren Moores, VP of Analytics at analytics and ad-targeting startup Dstillery. One solution, she said, is to start small with mobile impact studies, which compare desktop campaigns to campaigns that combine desktop and mobile efforts. Moores also sees signs of a new mobile customer-relationship-management layer starting to emerge, industrywide. As such, “As marketers get a better idea about what’s happening, we’re going to get better [mobile] data,” she said.