In this Purchase Path, on January 1, someone did a search for running shoes and clicked on a sponsored link for Finish Line. Then, two weeks later they did a more refined search and looked up Nike Women’s Shox. They didn’t purchase this time, but instead clicked on a Finish Line Sponsored link. Two weeks after this, on January 30, they searched Nike Shox Turbo VII, clicked on the Finish Line sponsored link, and this time they completed the purchase.
- In Attribution Rule A, all ads are equally important to the sale and were each a crucial part of the purchase process. Therefore the credit is split evenly among the 3 search ads
- In Attribution Rule B, the first ad is the most important. Without that first ad, the consumer might not have discovered Finish Line after the second and third search. If Finish Line didn’t not show up for the very general term “running shoes”, they might not have been included in their consideration set.
- In Attribution Rule C, the last ad before the conversion gets all the credit. This could be due to the fact that the searches occurred over a month and you believe that too much time elapsed between the searches and therefore only the last ad clicked before the purchase is relevant.