Marketers and researchers are under the gun every day to prove the financial impact of their work. At the same time, however, it is becoming apparent that the old metrics simply cannot keep pace with the radical changes in today's marketing environment – ultra-busy consumers, media and message saturation, and a host of new media options.

Marketers need to know not just when their advertisements and promotions had a chance of succeeding ("potential exposures"), but when they did succeed. This demands a deep understanding of consumers' engagement with media and other activities, expertise at consumers' relationships to brands, and behavioral data to tie interactions with purchases. Facts and insights need to be multifaceted and high-quality to be powerful; those companies that can marshal consumer focused ROI will satisfy senior management's demand to see the payoff of marketing's investment.