One of the most repeated stats about online marketing is that 44% of the purchases that happen online from advertising are for products unrelated to the ad(s) clicked on. If an online marketer were able to see the ad(s) that a consumer clicked en route to purchase, and discovered that the product they purchased was unrelated to the ad(s), how would they attribute sales credit across the ad(s)?

During the Attribution Management Forum 2.0 (AMF) on Jan 29^th, 2009, we posed that question to an audience of hundreds of senior online marketers and asked them to vote on the attribution model they would use in the following scenario:

In this scenario, a consumer did a search looking for “running shoes” and clicked on an ad for the Finish Line, but not did buy. They did a second search which was more refined and looked for “woman’s Nike Shox” and still did not buy. They then did a branded search for “Finish Line” and made a purchase. However, the product they purchase was unrelated to the first two ads.

We provided the audience with 3 attribution models they could choose from. They were as follows:

If you voted for:

A) Attribution Rule A, there were 3 ads involved before the sale. Regardless of which product was purchased, all 3 ads contributed and deserve equal credit for the sale.

B) Attribution Rule B, the product sold does not matter. However, when a branded term is used at the end of a path, it is being used to navigate back to the Finish Line. The customer could’ve found the Finish Line through the address bar or bookmark, however, they chose to use search again. In this instance, the consumer has already decided to buy and no sales credit goes back to the branded term at the end of a Purchase Path. Credit for the sale is split evenly between the first and second search.

C) Attribution Rule C, the purchase has nothing to do with what they searched for. Therefore, credit is excluded from the terms that do not relate to the product bought. All of the credit of the sale is attributed to the final ad for “Finish Line”.

The following charts highlight how the AMF participants felt attribution should be given, broken out by the indicated Attribution Management Experience Level:

What is interesting from these results?

• We presented the same scenario in the first Attribution Management Forum, but did not disclose the type of product sold. All the audience knew was that a sale occurred after clicking on the same 3 search ads. Over 76% of the group with the most AM experience voted to exclude giving credit to the branded term at the end of the path and favored dividing the credit across the first 2 search ads. In the scenario above, where the product sold was not related to the ads, only 17.95% chose to vote the same way.
• Almost 36% of the experienced group voted to give credit solely to the branded term at the end of the path. This was not the case in AMF 1.0 where the experienced group thought a branded term at the end of the path was used for navigation and was not deserving of sales credit.
• It would be interesting to know how the audience would have voted if the 3^rd search term was not a branded search, but instead was another running shoe related term.
• Why do people search and click on ads for one type of product, but then buy something very different? One obvious reason could be in the case of gift shopping. Perhaps you really wanted to buy someone shoes and when you got to the site another product caught your eye. Or perhaps your selection of shoes was not good enough or your prices were too high, but your selection and prices on other unrelated products of interest were in line.
• If a retailer could isolate ads that sell unrelated products, they could try to understand why they have difficulty selling those items. It probably has to do with the 4 P’s of marketing: Product, Price, Promotion, or Place.