Will Chapman, director of media development at AudienceScience, wants marketers to know about the "$50 billion tidal wave." On the internet, time spent is rising annually by 28 percent, and yet ad spend is only up 13 percent. Translation? A $50 billion missed opportunity. In order to close the gap, Chapman said at the iMedia Agency Summit, "We need to understand that consumers drive the sales funnel. Brand awareness, recognition, and recall are controlled by sophisticated consumer insight. Brands must drive consumers to purchase."

If you are having trouble using our video player, try watching on YouTube.

Brand advertisers have not moved spending online for a host of reasons -- image, price, and delivery risk, for example, or the ineffectiveness of exchange inventory. On the publisher side, in order to meet the needs of the brands, their goals and concerns must also be factored in to support transparency and control of creative quality and price -- an issue that forecasting and exchanges didn't resolve.

"Yield optimization for the publisher has always been one of the most difficult problems in online advertising," Chapman said. "Minimal control of creative coming through the exchanges can lead to inappropriate ads landing on the publisher's site."

Fortunately, Chapman has a three-pronged solution for destroying the barrier between marketers and that evasive $50 billion. Begin with enhanced brand targeting. Start running brand campaigns in protected online environments. "Request reporting that gives insight into advanced audience segmentation and look for brand-safe environments backed by some type of quality data guarantee," he said.

Next, an integrated audience targeting and data management platform is a necessity. "Take control of your data assets, making them accessible and actionable specifically for your marketing efforts," Chapman said. In addition, use online and offline data sources to access audience attributes, making sure that said sources have transparent data rights and privacy compliance standardization. Know your ultimate customer. The brand should define the audience, not the vendors.

The final piece is a media transaction platform. "When we boil down the advertiser issues and the publisher issues, what we are left with is the need for a one-to-one relationship of trust, enabled by a platform that supports a win-win solution. You need transparency of partner, placement, and price," Chapman said. Not only is this a safe way for publishers to facilitate targeting and forecasting without risking data leakage, but it allows advertisers to purchase guaranteed inventory and extend to the real-time bidding exchanges as needed.

Armed with Chapman's insight, that $50 billion mountain doesn't look so insurmountable after all.

Lucia Davis is associate editor for iMedia Connection.