What’s in a number? A lot when it comes to measuring success in digital advertising – join us at CES Digital Hollywood Monday to find out why – and how to track ROI

If you’ve made the decision to invest in digital advertising or social marketing efforts, you’ll want to make sure you know how to measure the value you’re receiving from such efforts. Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many companies jump into digital and social marketing efforts with no planned roadmap for measuring success. It’s challenge enough to keep up with the new technologies used in advertising – expanding your reach, buzz and impact – let alone understanding how to monitor and measure all the data and conclusions.

If you’re using an agency, they can interpret the data a number of ways to make it look successful. Would you know if it truly was? And who do you hold accountable if it isn’t? What formulas do you use to measure the performance of your initiatives? It’s important to know that insights don’t fall out of the sky, and that glazing over metrics trying to understand them is a waste of time. You need an effective way to get insights – and a clear understanding of which metrics matter – so you can ignore the rest.

I’m speaking on a panel on Monday with some outstanding digital marketing experts – we’ll help you to understand what to look for, how to monitor and most importantly, how to interpret data to draw valuable conclusions that pave the way for long term success. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise? If you invest in digital advertising and don’t know who saw it or what action was taken, was it effective? I hope you’ll join us Monday if you’re at CES, and weigh in on this important topic of advertising accountability. You can read further details about the panel and panelists here.