If I had to grossly oversimplify the experience/metrics arguments in advertising, I'd sum it up this way: if you're concerned with experience, for you the most important thing is sharing a great story in an engaging way. If you're concerned with data, you're only interested in sharing stories that you can tie to sales. It's a familiar tale. But two news stories from last week underscore how metrics are changing -- and why the new metrics are building great experiences, not undermining them.

In the competitive world of online audience targeting, setting your online targeting strategy apart from the competition with even the slightest data advantage can make all the difference. In the online world, most rely on an audience targeting approach that involves the clustering of cookies into "cookie pools" based on like online browsing behavior. These profiles are based on tracking audiences across the web sites they visit. A rich, but arguably untapped data source for online audience targeting is geographic data, which can be used to develop geo-profiles.

No one knows for certain if we're headed for a double-dip recession. But if we are in for more rough times, what might that mean for media metrics? A few thoughts follow.

You probably haven't thought through an analytics methodology for neuromarketing, biometric marketing, or any of the other new fields that scientifically measure emotional responses to ads. But you should.

For some of us, summer is a time to take a relaxing ride down a long, scenic roadway and leave our worries behind for a few hours. And for those who are lucky enough to drive a convertible, it's very clear how much "top-down" technology enhances this experience. Marketers have their own "top-down" technology -- called top-down attribution -- that can be used to enhance the performance of their marketing portfolios.

In all the excitement over comScore and Nielsen's recent entries into Facebook analytics, you may have overlooked a much sleepier social metrics announcement from earlier in the summer. Google Analytics now measures social interactions, too. Now, with Google Analytics reported as the most widely used analytics package on earth, it's very much worth considering what Google Analytics social features might mean for the industry.

Online ad effectiveness research is an imperfect science. But if we apply greater scientific rigor and follow best practices like those released by the IAB on July 13, we can make it a more valuable and useful tool.

We're living in an industry that's awash with data. But are we using the data in the right way? One study would indicate that the answer is no. A recent survey of CEOs by The Fournaise Marketing Group, a leading British customer acquisition firm, finds that 70% of chief executives feel that their CMOs' key metrics "hardly relate to or mean anything for the company's P&L." That's a bad sign. But before you decide CMOs aren't ready for the metrics challenges they face, I'd like to offer an alternative explanation. I'd bet that for every CMO who really doesn't get …

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 …