In the past few years, there has truly been a blossoming of companies trying to tackle -- or claiming to have tackled -- one of the thorniest issues in digital media metrics: fractional attribution.

While working at an agency with a robust analytics group is exciting, it can also be frustrating at times. Clients challenge us with questions that are often difficult to answer with a simple data pull/request. For example, an auto client may ask how digital media is driving auto sales for a specific model in a specific location. Another client may like to better understand how much they need to spend on digital media, and to that end, which media sequencing is most effective So the question becomes, with data collection and aggregation more important than ever, what steps can we …

The new reality we're facing is one in which we continually need to craft new analytics models, quickly, for channels we've never seen. There are a lot of incredibly smart people thinking through the issue (including the people I've quoted above); at the risk of speaking out of turn, I'll offer my own thoughts to the chorus on how that's done.

I recently spoke at "Twitter for Marketers" in Chicago, a conference that featured leaders from a variety of industries discussing how to effectively leverage Twitter as a marketing platform. One stat shared at the event really underscored how pervasive Twitter has become as an information-sharing platform -- 20,000 searches per second. That number shows that many consumers now actively use Twitter as a platform to find and engage with content.

Over the past few weeks, I've been pretty tough on TV metrics, arguing that GRP is outdated and that TV metrics aren't evolving quickly enough for a digital world. But don't think I'm bearish on TV. Quite the opposite. Digital media may be winning the buzz war, but TV continues to impress. And I'm not just talking about the enormous viewership TV continues to pull, even for watching programs at the moment they air. I'm talking about TV as an extraordinarily powerful platform for leveraging data.

In case you needed further evidence that TV metrics need an update, look no further than Tweet Week. The event, which took place this April, was an occasion for CBS stars to chat directly with fans over the social network. eMarketer recently ran a post-game analysis with George Schweitzer, president of CBS Marketing Group. The numbers seemed positive, but bad news on the metrics front loomed below the surface.