With so much discussion about marketing attribution recently, agreeing on a definition for the term can be a cumbersome process these days. And of course, within the attribution market there are also several different methodologies. Here are three things you should know about the differences between rules-based and data-driven attribution.

No online display campaign is complete without analyzing results. Brands and agencies both need to understand performance, but assessing how your campaign fits into the rest of your marketing plan can be very complex. So what can marketers do to understand how all their diverse campaign components work together?

In a figurative battle of tug of war, today's most innovative and quickly evolving marketing platforms continue to enable marketers with new capabilities, while at the same time challenging marketers' ability to accurately and effectively capture and quantify their performance.

In a May 8 post, Alex White makes some good points about how viewability measurement will alter the practice of buying as well as the value of display inventory in the programmatic space. We at the IAB applaud him for raising issues and conversation around viewability. White writes about the seemingly far-off ability to make viewability-based media buys, but the reality is that the Viewable Impression is coming fast. And, yes, there remains a significant amount of work to complete to ensure an orderly transition.

Attribution modeling or path-to-purchase analysis? These concepts are often used in the same context -- and, at times, are confused with one another. The purpose of both is to establish optimal touchpoints for consumer interaction with the brand and to optimize individual online channels to achieve the best cost savings and customer experience. So, what is the difference between the two?

Online advertisers are blinding themselves. And they're doing it on purpose. The digital channel enables us to track and gather actionable performance data virtually in real time. But we don't do it. I'm not referring to the much-maligned click-through rate, or CTR. Even though CTR still shows up on an RFP from time to time, most of the industry has rightly downplayed the significance of the CTR as a valid performance indicator.

After months of writing and speaking about Making Measurement Makes Sense (3MS), on my own and with esteemed colleagues from the buy and sell sides, I've learned that redundancy is actually a good thing. This is especially so in terms of the task at hand: changing measurement in a complex ecosystem. While we all crave standards, demand quality and believe that digital media need to be part of big brand allocations on a regular basis, some on the sell-side remain concerned about changing currency too quickly. Most of the concern centers on the technological complexity of assuring stable viewable impressions …

As with any service, technology, or combination of both, the expectations of the marketplace grow more sophisticated as the industry matures. Such has been the case in the marketing attribution space over the last 12 months, as brands, agencies, executives, media buyers and marketing analysts have all undergone an education from vendors, analyst firms and other thought leaders in the space.

There is one diagram that any marketer would be capable of sketching from memory, even after being awakened from the depths of an REM sleep cycle. It is a trapezoid with a shorter lower base -- or, perhaps, an overturned truncated cone --featuring several rows of words such as "awareness," "consideration," "engagement," "product discovery," "purchase" and "loyalty" placed within. Recognize it? Yes, it is the good old purchase funnel. For some marketers, this is all they remember from their MBA courses. But the industry has collectively concluded that the traditional purchase funnel is dead

One of the latest trends in today's digital marketing ecosystem involves the intersection of Big Data, marketing attribution and programmatic media buying. It's a trend that provides a glimpse of a future where the media buying process is much more efficient, and produces results far superior to traditional buying methodologies.