At an IAB Mobile Center board meeting last year, a very smart senior marketer at a major financial institution said that the industry needed an "MRAID for Measurement." I was thoroughly gratified by that statement -- MRAID (it stands for mobile rich-media ad interface definitions) has been one of my proudest IAB accomplishments -- but a little surprised, too: as an under-the-hood creative API, MRAID is not necessarily something I'd expect a senior brand marketer to have on his radar. My interpretation of that statement was that the chaos of mobile metrics created a need for a common framework for …

In preparation for the holidays, I recently took a trip to a local electronics store to buy a gift for my son. While I have visited the store frequently in the past to browse their selection, I had yet to make a purchase. As I walked through the entrance, I was approached by an employee who was passing out coupons for a discount off their hottest item -- coincidentally, the item I came to purchase. As I considered this offline remarketing tactic, it got me thinking about its online equivalent, which we all know as retargeting. Retargeting platforms serve specific …

Marketing, in its purest form, tells a story -- ideally, a good story. However, the reception of the story, similar to the reception of a marketing campaign, can be highly subjective. A nail-biting account of the sudden death, come-from-behind win of the Super Bowl underdog will likely command a better reaction, and have a higher degree of engagement, when delivered at a sports bar than shared at a bridge club meeting. The customer response to marketing efforts, similar to the response to fairy tales and sports stories, can fluctuate greatly depending on the audience.

Regarding the latest "technical glitch" affecting Nielsen's TV ratings, it would be useful and advantageous to have anticipated it before it happened. Next time, you can. We believe Nielsen is generally good, but every company makes mistakes -- and Nielsen is no different.