It’s funny how times change.

A few years ago many marketers would throw money at digital because it was the done thing. Everyone else was, so you had to be seen.

But the market has matured. The unique kinds of data we can now collate helps us tell so many different stories about how are campaigns are going.

Advertisers and agencies understand digital better and they now want more bang from their buck.

But for some, the plethora of numbers and ways to manipulate them leaves them confounded.

What are the right metrics? What is a good benchmark to measure against? Am I really being successful?

I sat on a panel here in LA on Monday that looked to address some of those issues.

The bottom line is that, although there’s no one tool out there that’s going to tell you everything you need to know, companies like Microsoft are looking to provide marketers with a platform which helps makes sense of the data through effective campaign delivery.

The idea behind Microsoft adCenter is that it’ll be a one stop shop. If we can reduce the heavy lifting of getting campaigns live across multiple touch points, there’s a cost saving right there.

If we can use algorithms to assess and optimise campaigns that consumers engage with throughout their purchase journey, there’s a very real chance of reducing wastage there too.

When we launched LookingGlass at Ad Week, the premise was one of taking social media technology a step further to enable data-layering from 3rd party sources on to consumer activity.

Understanding where the conversations are and using that buzz and sentiment to inform your marketing campaigns in real-time could have a dramatic effect on success.

There’s a lot of work going on with companies like comScore & Nielsen to help drive the message home that digital can be accountable if you look at data in the right way. Our EMEA Research team’s work on Dwell Time is a classic example of us pushing the boundaries of online metrics to help brands prove their campaigns are working.

One person right at the heart of our business that is helping advertisers spend their marketing dollars better, is the MD of Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group – Jeff Lanctot

I caught up with Jeff after he spoke on a session here yesterday where he said he noticed a change in advertiser behaviour:

You can check out a number of multi-screen case studies on our advertising site, and do take a look at all our coverage of Digital Hollywood 2010

Cheers

Mel

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