The powerful combination of digital advertising for a digital product in a digital environment has meant that game marketers have a greater ability to measure the effectiveness of their advertising, tracking at least some portion of sales and customer lifetime values in ways that are still elusive to other marketers. Video game marketers can measure the ROI of their online advertising with the detail and precision of direct marketers.

Building a cross-channel marketing organization requires three processes: creating a cross-channel marketing strategy, integrating cross-channel activity, and measuring a common cross-channel metric. Here's a closer look at what each one involves.

Traditional measurement tools handicap marketing managers and force upon them campaign measurment tactics that should have long been abandoned. As advertisers consider new standards for understanding display ad influence, it's important that they recognize ad engagement, and subsequent post-engagement conversions, as a viable metric.

Branding and awareness are valid, albeit generic, terms that are often used too freely to amorphously describe media objectives. This is the starting point where media investments can begin sliding down a slippery slope.