Sift Analytics is a Web-based service that collects data from both traditional advertising campaigns (TV, print, outdoor, direct mail) and interactive, measuring the impact of each tactic. The results are collected and analyzed from all sources, and the client can access the information in real time, with the click of a button.

In addition to tracking ad and marketing campaigns, Sift Analytics also has the capacity to generate leads for its clients. Behaviour of individual visitors can be analyzed for precision-based communication by helping the company to determine the products and services their customers are most interested in.

"Accountability for campaigns is entering a new era," says Jamie Davison, president, Modern Media. "The media has become so fragmented that GRPs, CPM, media spends and other metrics no longer tell the whole story. In fact, traditional measures of campaigns have not kept pace with changes in the marketplace.

"It's in everybody's interest to deliver entertaining and effective ads, but in addition, clients now want empirical proof that the campaigns are actually working."

Further, some larger companies work with multiple agencies and simultaneous campaigns.

"If you think about it from a strategic perspective, one agency could be doing advertising, another public relations, and a third, interactive, without a comprehensive strategy in place," says Davison. "As a result, nobody is measuring the overall effectiveness of the combined efforts, and they could be wasting valuable resources."

Davison said that while the Sift Analytics technology is complex, the application is straightforward.

"The idea behind Sift Analytics is to help clients create successful campaigns by offering a strategic approach to cross-platform marketing and most importantly, by providing genuine proof of how well everything worked," he says.

Modern Media is working both with agencies and direct to build Sift Analytics into existing campaigns.

"We are also building Sift Analytics into an ASP model where agencies will be able to log on to their own account and manage their clients accounts directly," says Davison. "The ASP model should be ready in the next month or two."