Digital media and traditional media are at a crossroads -- and when it comes to research and measurement, marketers are having difficulty knowing which way to turn. Since the dawn of the TV-era, countless dollars have been spent developing data-capture and analytics tools. But, the TV-centric model of measurement is obsolete. Media channel crossover is becoming more complex: television ads are linked to product Web sites, product Web sites lead to social media sites, and social media sites connect users with other users who are talking to each other about the product. Consumers are engaged with multiple channels simultaneously.
The old marketing and research models that assume media channels are independent of one another are simply no longer working. Without good models and tools, marketers risk making bad allocation decisions potentially sending millions of dollars into less...