You've researched and implemented all the latest SEO best practices. Your graphics are stunning, your products beautifully photographed and well organized. Your web site's code is crisp and clean, title tags descriptive and unique to each page. Your content is keyword rich. You've done away with unnecessary, flash-heavy landing pages and JavaScript navigation schemes.

Following is a sanitized version of an actual email from a CFO to a CMO at a global 1000 company: "Congratulations on being ranked in the recent list of top 10 "most efficient media buyers." It is a reflection of your ongoing commitment to getting the most out of every expense dollar, and well-earned recognition. But I can't help but wonder, what are we getting for all that efficiency?

Last week I had the good fortune of attending the I-COM Global Summit in Estoril, a lovely coastal town outside of Lisbon, Portugal. I-COM, the International Conference on Online Media Measurement, is " an industry backed global forum for exploring measurement issues facing the Digital Media Industry, with the goals of international cooperation and understanding, information sharing and working toward consensus on Best Practices." That's what they say. Here's what I say: I-COM is a forum for bringing together global online metrics providers, as well as their constituencies, to share information, learn about best practices, debate issues, do business -- …

In the early 18th century, scientists were fascinated with questions about the age of the earth. It took the collective learnings of geologists, astronomers, and physicists (and a few chemists along the way) and over 250 years to crack the code. Thousands of man-years of experimentation traced some smart and some not-so-smart theories, but we got to an answer that seems like a sound estimate based on all available data. Why torture you with the science lecture? Because there are so many parallels to where we are today with marketing measurement.

Keyword segmentation is a way to group keywords according to how their owners behave on your site. We do not care if keywords are branded or non-branded; long or short; general or specific. We are just looking at actual performance: did the visitors from that keyword bounce, browse, or buy? Which keywords consistently delivered great customers, versus the ones that had sporadic or nonproductive traffic?

When responsibility for selecting critical marketing metrics gets delegated by the CMO to one of his or her direct reports (or even an indirect report once- or twice-removed), it sets off a series of unfortunate events reminiscent of Lemony Snicket in the boardroom.

Whether it was unadulterated optimism about the growth of online media, or simply the fact that sunny San Diego can quickly erase memories of Eastern snow, the consensus view during the recent Interactive Advertising Bureau Annual Leadership Meeting is that our industry is finally entering its golden age. Best of all, it means that some of the myths bantered about in the industry over the past 12 to 18 months can finally be put to rest.

Information, we are told, wants to be free. Well, teenagers want to eat junk food, get high and have unprotected sex, but that doesn't make it a good idea (and it sure doesn't make it a business model.) I think perhaps it's time we sat information down for a heart-to-heart.

The future of advertising is not about social, not about viral videos, not about mobile, not about any new medium or any new ad unit -- but about data. Those who know what to do with this will be the new kingmakers, the new rulers of Madison Avenue -- or the creators of a new Avenue of media. Why is this so? Because the impression by itself is becoming worthless.

I got an email the other day from a marketing technology company trumpeting its software's ability to help me "improve marketing ROI without lifting a finger." Wow. Incredible. Can't be true, can it? I asked for a demonstration copy to see if I could realize the incredible benefit, but no luck. They wouldn't send me one. So to test the validity of the claim, I went to the center of all things factual -- the Internet -- to see what else I could do without lifting a finger. The options are amazing.