Specialization is crucial in online marketing, but more cross pollination among online marketing groups can ensure greater success.

To quote Sen. Ted Stevens, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation "…the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes."

This piece isn't going to be about Stevens' tube-clogging concerns or the even broader net neutrality debate but rather the connectedness of those internet "tubes." The fact that each page can be connected to any other page on the internet (i.e. it is a tube and therefore not a truck) is one of the defining characteristics of the internet's superior technical infrastructure.

What this means for an online marketer is that the ad they serve on an external media site like CNN.com is connected in a very powerful and fundamental way to the marketing messages served on that website. Once online marketers embrace this connectedness, the more relevant and effective their online marketing efforts will become.

I would venture to guess that most senior online marketing executives appreciate this point and feel it's worth examining some of the current hurdles and benefits that can be achieved if those hurdles are overcome. In most organizations, there are two main obstacles preventing online marketers from taking advantage of the connectedness of external media where they are running ads and their website.

The first hurdle is organizational. Most online marketers have media buying, planning and other external media-related functions managed by one group and their website marketing by another. These groups have different goals and related skills, so it is not hard to understand why these channels are handled by different groups.

A skilled media buyer who knows the IAB T&Cs and the intricacies of IOs like the back of their hand are often at a loss to figure out the right website page tagging structure and how to interpret site-pathing analysis that is run off the mill for a skilled webmaster.

Specialization is as important in online marketing as it is in any other field, but I would like to make a plea for more cross pollination among online marketing groups. While this will require additional communication overhead and spending time to get more folks on the same page, I think the benefit is very compelling. If both sides are more aware of the goals and challenges faced by the other group, more effective external media campaigns and more relevant sites are almost inevitable. The real payoff is that the online marketing group as a whole will show improved performance and will continue to warrant an increasing share of their company's overall media budget.

The second hurdle keeping external media advertising and site marketing disconnected is technical. Just as online media and site marketing are "siloed," organizationally, the technologies these groups use are also siloed.
 
Again, it's no surprise that because these technologies were developed with the needs of each specific group that the technologies are as siloed as the groups using them.

The organizations that I've seen successfully connect external media and onsite marketing have done so by getting organizational buy-off on the metrics and data to be used by both groups. I have participated in a number of these meetings and most of the time they are neither easy nor fun. But in every case, the resulting game plan is more strategic and comprehensive than previous plans. The media team can make its media work harder to collect data, track user preferences and re-market to engaged prospects, and webmasters can make their sites smarter, more relevant to the different customer segments and ultimately achieve higher conversion rates.

From a practical perspective, push your online marketing technology vendors hard to ensure that they have thought about connecting external media and onsite data, and that they take special care to address issues of double counting and correct ad-to-conversion attribution.

Good luck getting your message out into the tubes and connecting your external media advertising and onsite marketing in an integrated effort.

Ted Shergalis is chief product officer and founder of [x+1], a company that helps marketers simplify their online marketing. Read full bio.