My name is Steve and I’m a news junkie. But I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the distracting and destructive advertising I’ve seen on news websites lately. And I’m not the only one.

As a digital marketer, the importance of constantly monitoring and analyzing website analytics is vital in order to understand website traffic and make recommendations and optimizations to improve a campaign’s performance.

Digital marketing has become a data-driven science, which gives us as marketers the ability to prove results and ROI.

We should all know by now that digital marketing is no longer an option, it’s a necessity. However, the digital marketing world can be confusing and ambiguous, so how do you know what to do, why to do it and if it’s working? I’ve put together 3 questions you should ask your marketing team so that you can sleep better at night, put some important changes in place or find a new marketing team.

Undoubtedly you haven’t been able to avoid all the buzz surrounding the HTML5 discussion (thanks Google). At VI we thought we'd take the opportunity to throw our unique perspective out into the world. This discussion is highly nuanced and can at times become extremely technical, so we are going to attempt to keep this simple and informative while still bringing something new to the table.

Over the past several years, there has been a tremendous increase in digital video consumption. Let’s take a quick look at some numbers that illustrate this point. eMarketer estimated digital video spending at approximately $7.66 billion in 2015, a 46% year-over-year increase. That amount is expected to reach $9.84 billion in 2016. Furthermore, an estimated 66% of the US population will consume some form of digital video in 2016.

The digital landscape changes everyday, which makes it difficult to keep up, much less know what’s coming next. This isn’t an attempt at guessing new digital tactics, it’s a forecast for how I believe ideas and strategy will evolve over the next year.

There is no television program more exciting or expensive to advertise during than the Super Bowl. According to eMarketer, 21% of companies who advertise during the Super Bowl spend over 10% of their annual marketing budget on this one commercial.

It’s no surprise digital marketing is dominating the ad buying space. Time spent online is predicted to account for 46.7 percent of total time spent with media, and as a result marketers are projected to spend 17 percent more in the digital space this year alone.

If you’re like other marketers, you’ve probably noticed that advertising is changing. Even though the first banner ad appeared 21 years ago, it seems the changes in digital advertising have recently been moving faster than the speed of light.

If you're a business that still posts to Facebook and prays that your target demo will see it, just stop it. It probably has never worked and never will. And because it has never worked, you are probably in the camp that thinks social media doesn't work. Here we go. Strap in.

“Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker didn’t have big data and cloud storage to prove the worth of his advertising. What’s your excuse?