Thanks for commenting. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I have general sense of hesitation over the increasing push to put offline/online marketing data on one dashboard.

It is helpful of course, but what is implied is that if you can have your offline and online data in one report, you can easily see what channels are most effective.

As you said, to make it work requires effective coordination, planning and modeling (trackable URLs, coupon codes, scheduling launches), but I think mid-sized companies see the dashboard and not the planning behind it to make it effective nor that analysis on them to get actionable intelligence.

This has been a challenge for me, as mid-sized companies look to do bigger things but may not be prepared to build the process in place to take that on.

As for panels, that would be great. I’ve been to 1-2 media mix case studies sessions, which was nerdy fun for me.

Most of the companies I’ve worked for have been concerned with properly getting the amount of traffic from brand advertising & pr activity. These have generally been credited with what’s “left over.”

It’s somewhat easier in the web world, since the direct marketing vehicles such as SEM & display can be connected with a click (and let us not speak of the actual user intent or branding effect of these vehicles). Then you have to look at new vs. existing users. within existing users, drilling down into when the last time the user was on the site is useful. Traffic quality gives you a sense of the advertising is not only effective, but effective at driving the *right* kind of users.

Going back to the broader question, there’s a ton of tools to bring all the data into one dashboard – for CPG companies, it can include things like FSIs, coupons, along with TV, competitive activity, etc. For us, I might include competitive product launches, big events that drive search activity (e.g. back to school, breaking news stories), along with all the marketing activities. You also have to take a healthy dose of reality and historicals to see if these are trends or real movement.

We develop complicated models to reflect the totality of the experience, and then have to augment with a series of qualitative measures to really assess the actual performance.

We should have a round table discussion on this at some point.