Acronyms are making a pop-culture comeback. Let me demonstrate: “GoT.” All it takes is three simple letters for images of medieval castles and fire-breathing dragons to inevitably pop into our heads. Such is the power of the hit show Game of Thrones, and media in general. Now, with popular streaming services pumping out their own award-winning original content, it’s no wonder over a million people have quit cable and dish in the first quarter of this year alone.

Safety first! We’ve all heard it before, and it’s good advice. But when billions of ad spend dollars are at stake, it’s great advice. Critical, even. And the ad tech industry has taken that advice, mulled it over with some international partners, and is now running full-speed toward total fraud prevention in a transparent and trustworthy digital marketplace. If you’re raising a skeptical eyebrow right now, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

If you’re working in the present-day digital marketing space, you will almost certainly feel overwhelmed from time to time. The industry seems to be growing with every passing hour, as new tools are introduced, studies released, practices encouraged, and so on. Added to this is the sheer quantity of data cascading in every direction and from sources as innumerable as they are diverse. Fortunately, the work of quantifying and analyzing that data is readily achievable with the aid of advanced Artificial Intelligence software engineered with the specific goal of delivering usable reporting.

For centuries, the Republic of Venice prospered as a direct result of its enormous commercial power throughout the Mediterranean and an economic reach which extended still further. Had the Republic’s trade practices been limited to the Italian peninsula or even to Western Europe, its wealth and prestige would have been a fraction of what they ultimately became. Instead, Venetian traders exchanged goods with merchants in modern-day Turkey and places well beyond.

Middle-sized to larger companies tend to keep knowledgeable experts of all sorts on the payroll. From a general counsel to a head of Information Technology, every organization needs specialized minds to act in explanatory roles and very often as knowledgeable liaisons. The reasoning is as sensible as it is obvious - companies like to have trusted insiders to help understand and usefully contextualize complex situations, vendor needs, et cetera. But having in-house advisors does not always equate to having in-house solutions.

As a marketer, have you ever wondered why your customers leave after just two months, or why there’s a sudden 60% plummet in your daily average usage? Or, why is it that some days customers just don’t convert on the checkout page, and why do 25% of my customers always cancel after six weeks? If you find yourself wondering what the answer is to these questions, it’s probably time you run a churn analysis.

With the technological advances that have come about in the last decade, marketers can now drive campaign performance more effectively than ever before. However, this is no indication of a digital panacea, as there are always going to be speedbumps to overcome, and innovations to incorporate. One of the challenges today’s advertisers face, is to harness all of the pertinent data rather than just look at bits and pieces of a partial picture.

The viewership space is changing by the moment as viewers themselves are increasingly and consistently engaging with content on their own terms. This is a result of diversifying device technology and the content-viewing habits such diversity supports. The over-the-top (OTT) emergence ensures that finding online content to your liking and making time to view it is wholly individualized in a way that liberates viewers from scheduling/programming constraints requires the strategic casting of a wider net on part of digital marketers.

Understanding the shopper journey is paramount to both your marketing strategy and your desired end results. Without enough accurate data, there’s no way to be fully confident in the effectiveness of your ad campaigns, and therefore, no way to know where precious advertising dollars are being wasted. The solution to this comes down to two primary things: Complete omnichannel presence (both online and in-store) Limitless attribution tracking (from impression to final conversion) In today’s rapidly-changing market, the only way to stay truly competitive is by playing the numbers game.

Have you ever gone to the store to buy a particular brand of – let’s say pants, for the sake of this example – and when you get there you find another brand that seems to fit you well, and costs way less? But, then again, they aren’t your go-to brand with which you’re so familiar. You’d probably do a search and read some reviews, and if they looked impressive to you, you may just go against your “brand instinct.