At this point, every marketer knows consumers live in a cross-channel and cross-device world. Customers interact with your media several times before converting. Understanding what those conversion paths look like and how different channels interact is key when it comes to mandatory optimizing media decisions, and deciding what role display should play in the mix.

What the media planner/buyer thinks Then: Display was the winner ... of the leftovers When I started in this industry seven years ago, display ads and relevant content went together like pb&j. Car advertisers ran standard Flash banners on auto sites, cpg advertisers ran standard Flash banners on recipe sites and so on. Networks were accustomed to adding significant amounts of impressions to a campaign at efficient rates. Behavioral targeting was the "hot topic," allowing advertisers to get in front of an audience based on their Web-surfing behavior. Click-through rate was primarily used to measure success with a few advertisers …

"Display media is not performing. Let's reallocate to paid search." Sound familiar? In recent years, display media has been taking the back seat, not just to paid search but to other emerging platforms. While display continues to have the largest share, it is evident that it is losing its luster: By 2016, eMarketer predicts its share of the digital mix to be down by 15 percent. Identifying the proper display media mix can be challenging, especially given the growing number of targeting options. But applying the correct display media tactics, paired with the right attribution model, will drive both brand …

In January, comScore released a new way to account for the impressions made by digital display advertising, following many of the guidelines laid out in the industry's Making Measurement Make Sense initiative. This solution -- which we call the Validated Campaign Essentials -- provides an unduplicated accounting of impressions delivered across a variety of dimensions, helping to significantly improve the value of online advertising. VCE gleans all this information via a single ad tag -- thus enabling a comprehensive, but holistic, view of digital ad delivery.

Do advancements in display advertising make advertisers better off today compared to four years ago? As technologies like programmatic buying and native ad units take hold, this question is also relevant to the evolution of "premium" display ads. Ad pundits have already made display advertising the most jargon-littered playing field in the digital realm, and adding to the confusion is the constant evolution of what premium display -- the industry's alleged creme de la creme -- actually means.

Display ads are the lettuce in the salad -- the foundation of many online ad campaigns. Yet one-third of display ads go unseen by site visitors, according to comScore. Even when the ads are seen, few are clicking, and many others aren't even noticing. Some of that ineffectiveness is now being addressed as advertisers are starting to vary their creative and implement more precise targeting to make sure the impressions that are paid for are being viewed.

Does online display advertising build brand equity? There is a lot of debate on this subject, but a comScore study commissioned by iProspect on the branding implications of digital media in 2010 concluded that online display advertising is indeed capable of producing brand lift. Meanwhile, brands are clearly convinced that online display works because they are spending serious money on it, and the smartest are going well beyond static - and boring - banner ads to entice and connect with consumers through breakthrough creative. Two recent examples: Security Service Federal Credit Union and Supercuts. The companies couldn't be more different. …

Beyond accumulating "likes," what can brands do to reach and interact with consumers? So-called "brand-to-fan" connector and influencer marketing start-up Crowdtap has got a few ideas. We all know that social media marketing presents vast opportunities beyond a few Facebook tabs and retweeted sweepstakes entries. But since it came out of beta in March 2011, Crowdtap has helped the likes of Old Navy, Adidas and Microsoft connect with, learn from, and reach influencers and their networks. "How do we scale this and make this a platform any brand can use?" Crowdtap founder and CEO Brandon Evans asked when forming the …

There is a lot to look at in Sin City, but the columns in the lobby of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas are truly marvelous. Conceived and designed by architect David Rockwell, there are eight columns in all, each standing 12 feet tall and wrapped with digital screens displaying content 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. "Every time you come back, it's a new experience - whether you were here in April and come back in December, or whether you were here at noon one day and come back at four the same day," says Lisa Marchese, chief …

Burberry broke new digital ground in 2009 when it launched the seminal artofthetrench.com. The Web site celebrated the iconic Burberry trench and the people who wear it by allowing users to submit their own trench portraits to feature on the site. The customers who love Burberry suddenly were Burberry. The site looked lovely; it was on-brand, and it marked the first time a fashion leader featured user-generated content, Mullen says. It was also wildly popular, receiving 1.5 million visits in its first two weeks. While traffic has since dropped to just about 5,000 users per month, it's part of a …