We spend $1 out of every $100 of our media budget on the "last mile": converting visitors who come to our site into customers. There are a few reasons for this lopsided ratio. One reason may be that we feel by filling up the funnel we will drive more traffic. But how should you be investing in the "last mile"? Deploying a personalized site experience will provide the biggest opportunity for improving the visitor experience, thus helping to increase your qualified site conversions. A large part of this strategy is leveraging the right set of tools to convert online behavioral …

One of the biggest metrics stories from the last few months boils down to two words: digital GRP. Whether it's from Nielsen, comScore, or DoubleClick, one of the biggest challenges that digital measurement firms are trying to meet is helping traditional, brand-driven advertisers find a home for budgets online -- by making the vastly different worlds of digital and offline advertising finally comparable.

Two days ago, I had the pleasure of briefing the industry that interactive advertising revenue in 2011 once again broke records. In the Q&A session that followed the revenue briefing, there was a question that instantly brought Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) to the forefront again. We all know that any conversation about ad revenue is inextricably tied to measurement and metrics. In the advertising business, metrics are as much a part of what we do as creative executions. Measurement and metrics provide the currency without which there can be no transactions.

As we speak, the IAB, ANA, and 4A's are deliberating on a standard ad metric that could change the very nature of how digital advertising is bought, sold and measured. It's all about viewable impressions right now. As I talk to clients and associates about the impending viewable impression standard, there's some confusion about some of the finer points -- some of the most techy ad ops questions in years. I've identified four of them:

One of the questions frequently asked about attribution is how much cookie deletion by Internet users affects its accuracy. This is an extremely valid question, because proper attribution of digital channels such as search and online display is very much dependent on these little pieces of code placed on users' computers to collect the data associated with the touchpoints created by your campaigns. So without cookies, the attribution process that's dependent on that touchpoint data seems as if it would break.

As online marketers become more sophisticated in how they measure and plan media buys across various online channels -- from display and search advertising to video and social marketing campaigns -- they're also sometimes confused by the different ways industry pundits, peers and vendors talk about new terms and trends. Take, for example, two of the most popular topics on the minds of online marketers today: attribution and optimization. While they're complementary, they play very different roles in helping advertisers improve their investments in online and offline media.

Over the past decade, cross-media research has become increasingly important to advertisers. Today's marketers utilize multiple media channels to reach their target audience, and advertising research methodologies have also evolved to compare those channels on their ability to educate and persuade. We recently examined two popular methodologies to determine if and how their results differ. The first methodology is based on consumer recall of advertising; the second, on the "opportunity to see" an ad.