I'd argue that no medium in history has ever enabled the capacity for near-boundless creativity as well as hyper-granular analytics as the Internet has done for us.

This tension -- especially for those engaged in trying to run a profitable Internet-based business -- rears its head in Internet content creation, in marketing and advertising.

Scott Ferber (left), a cofounder of Advertising.com (now part of AOL) and more recently, TidalTV, has his own interesting take on this tension in an essay on Adotas.com, a trade pub for the Internet advertising and media industry.

The essay's called: "Time to give data a voice in the creative branding process." Ferber believes that the online video market can be cracked open with better measurement and analytics:

In the online video space, traditional online metrics must evolve to include brand measurement – purchase intent, awareness, favorability, etc. After all, online video is a medium designed to deliver many of the same advertising characteristics that TV provides, only with more targetablity, measurability and interactivity. The need to measure (and optimize) against brand metrics in real-time is a must to make online video a truly viable brand building media solution.