On a recent business trip in New York, I came upon a street vendor selling bottles of what he touted as a cure-all for just about any ailment, from sore muscles to exhaustion and migraines. My experience got me thinking about the plethora of marketing measurement solutions available today. Some tout the benefits of algorithms based on game theory, agent-based modeling, and any other buzzwords designed to woo the marketer. But are these types of algorithms really applicable to marketing measurement? And if so, how can a marketer be sure they are applied correctly? In order to avoid snake oil, …

The recent IAB Annual Leadership Meeting (Feb 8-10), attended by more than 1,100 executives, featured a number of conversations about viewability, including a Town Hall devoted to the subject. Over the course of high-level dialogue with stakeholders from the buy, sell and tech sides, it was clear that confusion persists. Clarifications were necessary:

PHOENIX: The IAB held its Annual Leadership Meeting this past Sunday-Tuesday here (#IABALM, if you want to peruse the relevant tweets), and not surprisingly, measurement issues were among the hot topics of discussion. Viewability seemed to loom largest, both from the podium and in my conversations with publishers and agency people. In fact, several friends at publisher companies told me that most of the meetings they were taking at the conference were about viewability.

Marketing, as a craft, is being reinvented in the digital age. David Ogilvy, the "Father of Advertising" himself, may have said it best when he remarked, "In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create." To be successful, organizations must find - and maintain - the right balance between these two critical components. This delicate blend of art and science is particularly important when it comes to measuring campaign performance.