As the new millennium became the digital age, the promise of the new internet medium quickly became a marketer’s dream. The technology provided the potential to be able to track consumers’ activity, from ads they saw, to the sites they visited and the purchases they made. And with the unique identifier (the computer’s IP address) having absolutely nothing to do with personal identifiable information, it could all be done without violating individual privacy rights.

However, as is too often the case, it was much easier in theory than in practice. And as the internet evolved over the last decade, the marketer’s dream devolved into a nightmare as everyone realized how valuable this data can be to brands and tried to grab a piece of the rapidly growing digital pie.

The fragmentation started slowly. Site analytics and media analytics had different objectives so it only made sense that they primarily be separate.

Then the search wave hit. Suddenly, you had two separate demand generation activities in theory working together, but never being evaluated or analyzed simultaneously. Instead, each took its own path, trying to claim attribution for the greater share of the pie.

Now, however, the analytics world has reached new extremes.

If you run creative advertising placements with PointRoll along with Doubleclick For Advertisers, you’ll need to use both to evaluate the creative performance.

Want to run an ad on Facebook to see how it performs and get involved in the social media explosion? Go for it – but Facebook will stop allowing third party tracking on their ads starting November 1, meaning you’ll have to get that performance data direct from Facebook. And since Facebook, after all, is only interested in driving traffic within Facebook, you better get ready to have an involved experience on your Facebook fan page as well.

Consumers now have a whole new way of gaining access to the web experience as smartphones have emerged, and along with them, more fragmentation. The developer war rages on between Apple, Google and Research In Motion, meanwhile, different platforms are being used and none work cross-platform. And don’t even get started on the possibility of running an ad on a mobile website and trying to see how many of the people that see it end up popping open the mobile app that they already installed on their phone.

We’ve gone from the hope of a single unique identifier to more touchpoints than one can count and no easy way of aggregating all of them as each channel looks to utilize its own proprietary offering in an effort to emphasize its incredible performance, and more importantly, make more money.

However, all hope is not lost, at least not yet. While there are certain issues that likely will forever remain a hurdle (connecting someone’s PC activity with their mobile activity, for example), there are a plethora of opportunities to join metrics together to tell a greater story.

With the advent of new coding languages, specifically HTML5, tracking across many different mediums could be possible, allowing for the unification of the previously fragmented segments. Imagine a single tracking cookie that will persist in someone’s browser for months, even years, and can track numerous forms of media from search to display and rich media. Developer Samy Kamkar made news recently by releasing a “supercookie” that couldn’t be deleted via traditional browsing cookie deletion tools. In other words, the marketer’s dream on the web still is within reach.

Of course, for this technology to be utilized, a huge gap will have to be closed when it comes to trust between consumers and brands on the internet. But it’s a bridge that can be built. It just has to be built through trust as opposed to avoidance, hoping consumers won’t know what their favorite brands are up to, on their own computers of all places.

Seems impossible, but instead of the brands focusing on their own needs, maybe they’d be better off focusing on the value proposition for the consumer – what do THEY gain by allowing their activities to be tracked?

It happens every day when you enter the local grocery store or pharmacy. You go to pay for your new prescription and a few miscellaneous items, and pull out your membership rewards card. With one quick scan, they’ve recorded your latest activity, but from a consumer’s standpoint, they’re indifferent, because they’re eagerly awaiting the coupons that are going to print out at the end of the receipt.

So, while the data may be fragmented now and continually breaking up even deeper, hope still remains to reunite. Now it’s a matter of waiting for the proper technology to come into place, while building the opportunity and hook to get consumers to follow the path.

Paul Wezner, Senior Contributor, Strategy — Organic, Inc.