If you're in an organization with an online presence, the topic of AB and multivariate testing is bound to come up in conversation at some point. Getting a testing program off the ground is not as difficult as it sounds if you take it one step at a time (literally). Here are a few recommendations for getting your testing program up and running.

Social media is a complex space and many companies are just getting their feet wet (yes, still!). The main questions they are asking: If I don't have active social media campaigns, do I still need to measure this space? And what should I expect to get out of it?

The classic problem of "marketing versus IT" is real. Based on what I hear from my industry colleagues, the analytics team often has issues with IT resources being sufficiently delegated to supporting a Web analytics implementation and program.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that no company can succeed by cutting expenses alone, let's dwell for a moment on the practical necessity of today's world: cut, cut, and cut some more. Yes, we all should have been smart enough to build sufficiently robust measurement capabilities BEFORE the dramatic assault on our budgets began. Yes, we should have put some water in that bucket BEFORE the fire consumed so much of the house that marketing built. But we didn't. So what do we do now that we're caught in the downward cutting spiral? Where do we turn once …

If you can look at a commercial enterprise and suggest a logical, measurable way to raise revenues, lower costs and/or increase customer satisfaction -- or just come up with a logical way to test ways to raise revenues, lower costs or increase customer satisfaction -- your time has come. It is your time to shine.

In a comment on my last contribution to this column, one reader wondered whether, and I'm paraphrasing here, my decision to write these columns with a subjective voice and point of view (that is, the POV of the comScore Chief Research Officer) was appropriate. I thought it was a fair point, but as I indicated in response, this is part-column, part-blog; and as long as my affiliation is sufficiently "disclaimed," best to write what I know. And what I believe. And to let you all keep me honest should that become necessary. So in that spirit, I thought I'd devote …

As organizations cut their budgets and look to justify the ROI of all projects, smart marketers are those who work across channels and coordinate metrics for a complete picture of the marketing program, not just their individual channel. So why aren't there more multichannel marketers out there? While customers are comfortable moving from the Web site to the store, marketers in the online and offline worlds aren't always comfortable crossing the road and coordinating metrics.

In the flat world of Web communication networks, is the old marketing strategy of seeking out influential opinion-leaders really dead? Some digital digerati (like Guy Kawasaki) suggest that in today's world of blogging and tweeting, mass reach is the name of the game. On the other side of the issue are people like Ed Keller of Keller Fay, who literally wrote the book on the influentials. Keller's research into both online and offline WOM suggests that online WOM is still only a small fraction of offline WOM volume in most categories, and that nothing is more effective at driving behavior …

For the Web analyst, measuring the impact of social bookmarking can be challenging. Most of the social bookmarking tools provide analytics for the code that is placed on the publisher's Web site. In this case the analytics are self-contained in the sharing tool's portal and completely segregated from a site's Web analytics implementation. Specific metrics reported may include...

I grew up in the field of audience measurement. I was working in the Statistical Services department at Arbitron in 1980, before I was out of college; I would take the subway uptown from Washington Square wearing a shirt and tie under my leather jacket. In fact I spent the first seven years of my professional career in that department, working with and learning from some of the all-stars and leading lights of media research. I'm indulging in this little trip down memory lane to make the point that I had a pretty good bottom-up schooling in the discipline of …