Why does accuracy matter when measuring marketing effectiveness? Accuracy matters because in today’s world, marketing decisions are made on data. The best creative is not the one that makes us laugh the hardest, and it’s not the one that we remember for the longest period of time. No, it’s the one that produces the most profit. The more accurately we can measure our marketing effectiveness, the better decisions we make, which ultimately…
Read the entire article on the Search Engine Land Blog…
Forrester Research, Inc. recently released their Interactive Attribution Q4: 2009 report, a 44-criteria evaluation of interactive attribution vendors.
Reading the report will give you an understanding of how Forrester sees each vendor in the space and what each vendor’s strengths and weaknesses are. One key point in the analysis is there is not one specific way to do attribution—each vendor approaches attribution in a unique way. For this post, we’re going to focus on the two specific types of attribution: “operational” (or day-to-day) attribution and “project-based” (or strategic, high-level) attribution…
Read the entire article on the Search Engine Land Blog…
Attribution: What It Is And Why Its Important
Given the critical nature of attribution management to advertising analytics, we have created the Attribution Management Buyer’s Guide for marketers to use when selecting an advertising analytics and optimization platform. The Guide is intended to highlight key attribution management features and functionality that should be available in any advertising analytics solution you select.
This is the eighth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This eighth section focuses on Basic Attribution Models.
When engaging with a new attribution management technology, you should be able to start performing attribution on day one out of the box. Though attribution can be a very complex exercise, there are also some simple attribution models that can greatly improve the performance of your online campaigns. To ensure the solution you decide to go with offers attribution models that you can use on day one, ask the following questions:
1. What kind of basic attribution models does your platform offer?
2. Can you verify that using these base attribution models will improve my accuracy and performance?
A robust attribution platform should be able to offer basic attribution models out of the box, such as:
An experienced attribution management provider should be able to provide you with case studies or examples of how these basic models were able to increase the accuracy of conversion valuation and, ultimately, how that improved performance, as measured by increased profit and/or ROI.
Of course, the best indicator of an attribution management models success is its ability to grow your own bottom line profit. You’ll need to have a benchmark in place before you start attribution to make sure these models truly are having the desired impact.
Part 9 – Mathematical Attribution
This is the ninth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This ninth section focuses on Mathematical Attribution.
After you find success using basic attribution models, you may want to move to more advanced attribution that allows you to set specific weights for different activities that occur during the purchase path. When selecting an attribution management vendor, it is imperative they offer not only basic attribution models but also provide you the ability to build more sophisticated models either through the use of their technology and/or with their consultative services.
Asking the following questions will ensure you have the ability to be more sophisticated in the future:
1. What kind of customization options do you offer?
2. Do you offer any consultative services that can build custom attribution models?
Moving beyond an Even attribution or an Even with Exclusions model requires an understanding of some complex mathematics. Setting custom attribution rules should not be a subjective exercise and should only be taken on by attribution management vendors with solid statistical and mathematical knowledge. Custom models should be able to include variables like the decay rate of different types of ads, the influence potential of different types of ads, additional time variables, types of products sold, type of customer, impact of social media, etc.
Part 10 – Data Warehousing
This is the tenth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This tenth section focuses on Data Warehousing.
When you make the move to attribution management, you’re going to then be collecting a wealth of information you did not have access to before. For example, you’re now going to have information for all the ads involved in the sale(s) versus just the last ad. If you are tracking true profit that means you are also going to have individual product information. You also know a lot more about your customers buying behavior since you are able to see all the ads your customer uses versus the last one. To harness this information and to make it actionable, it will require the use of a data warehouse, which can be a powerful marketing intelligence asset for your company.
Ask the following questions to determine how your attribution vendor will allow you to get even more value out of the data being captured:
1. Does your technology reside on a data warehouse?
2. Do you offer a data warehouse as an option?
3. Can the warehoused data be queried to create custom reports?
Attribution management systems that are built upon a data warehouse will provide you with much greater flexibility in building custom models and custom reports. Additionally, it will be able to provide further analytics around things, such as product trends, customer buying behavior and lifetime value, for example.
Conclusion
Sophisticated marketers are keenly aware of the importance of Attribution Management in accurately measuring and improving the performance of their cross‐media advertising campaigns. The challenge for these marketers is to find a robust advertising analytics platform that is built on a foundation of attribution management. Hopefully, this Guide will help you assess whether the solution you’re considering measures up to the robust requirements of an effective attribution management platform.
Want to get more involved in attribution management? We invite you to become a member of the Attribution Management Forum, an online group that represents more than 300 leading marketers from a diverse range of companies across nearly every industry segment. For more information on joining, or for additional information on Attribution Management, visit us online at AttributionManagement.com or ClearSaleing.com.
Check out the remaining blogs in the Attribution Management Buyers Guide series:
Part 1 – Attribution Variables
Part 2 & 3 – Products and Ad Sources Tracked
Given the critical nature of attribution management to advertising analytics, we have created the Attribution Management Buyer’s Guide for marketers to use when selecting an advertising analytics and optimization platform. The Guide is intended to highlight key attribution management features and functionality that should be available in any advertising analytics solution you select.
This is the sixth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This sixth section focuses on Purchase Path Stages.
Purchase path stages represent specific consideration steps in the overall buying process that a consumer goes through en route to a purchase.
Now that you are valuing ads based on where they occur in the customer buying cycle, it will be important for you to be able to identify and differentiate which specific ads introduce your brand to the customer, which ads influence their buying decision, and which ads close the sale. This information helps you pinpoint how certain ads are having a positive influence on customers in the beginning or middle of the buying cycle versus those at the end that close deals.
One question to ask vendors is, ‘How does your system report on which ads do a great job of introducing people to my business, closing deals, or being an ad that sits in between the two and influences the buying behavior? ‘
An additional benefit of working with a vendor that determines the effectiveness of all relevant ads along the purchase path is that, like most companies starting out in attribution, you will find you have many ads that close deals, but very few that wields influence during the early part of the buying cycle. This type of information highlights opportunities to invest in ads that are effective influencers in the early or middle parts of the buying cycle.
Attribution Management Buyers Guide Part 7 – Time
Time is one of the most impactful variables when performing attribution. Therefore, it is important that the attribution technology utilized provides you a lot of flexibility to apply different time variables and provides a lot of insight about the time it takes consumers to purchase and to navigate through the Purchase Path.
Here are some questions that you should ask of attribution management vendors to ensure that you’ll have the flexibility needed to handle this important variable:
The ideal attribution management solution should be flexible with leveraging time as one of the key attribution attributes. Specifically, the solution should allow you to tell the time from first and last click to conversion. It should also be able to measure intervals between all clicks in the Purchase Path. This data, coupled with the ability to set an appropriate time window to apply attribution, will allow you to more accurately attribute proper credit back to the ads that contributed to the sale. In addition, the cookie that the vendor provides should optionally be configurable to last for much greater than 30 days, and it should renew each time that person visits the website.
The ideal attribution management vendor should allow you to easily see the time from first ad to conversion, last ad to conversion, and the time between each ad. The cookie that the vendor provides should last for much greater than 30 days and should renew each time that person visits the website.
Attribution Management Buyers Guide Blog Part 2: Products
Given the critical nature of attribution management to advertising analytics, we have created the Attribution Management Buyer’s Guide for marketers to use when selecting an advertising analytics and optimization platform. The Guide is intended to highlight key attribution management features and functionality that should be available in any advertising analytics solution you select.
This is the second blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This second section focuses on Products, where we focus specifically on the products or services that were sold as a result of a team of ads.
The most critical question to ask here is, ‘Does the solution show the actual products/services that were sold by order, or do you just report that an order occurred along with the revenue it produced?’
On our previous post, we focused on Attribution Variables, which are the key metrics by which you are valuing conversion credit across the participating team of ads. Of the three metrics we highlighted (conversions, revenue, and profit), profit was the optimal metric to use.
In order to get to profit, an attribution management system needs to be aware of the products you’ve sold so that it can calculate profit by subtracting sales price minus the price of cost of goods sold minus cost of advertising, and then apply tax and shipping rules. If the attribution management system cannot report on products sold, then it cannot produce true profit figures. At best, it will be able to take revenue and allow you to apply a flat margin across all of your sales.
An added benefit of a system that can report on products sold is that it can provide a wealth of information about trending of products you sell, which products get sold together often, and also provide an opportunity for up sell and cross sell in the future.
Attribution Management Buyers Guide Part 3: Ad Sources Tracked
For attribution management to be done correctly, it cannot be done in a silo. Many conversions are the result of multiple forms of advertising. For example, a banner impression leads someone click on a paid search ad, then an organic search, and then they convert. If the solution you’re using is only able to capture paid search, it would be oblivious to the fact that the banner impression is what introduced that person to your brand, and that the organic listing is what eventually closed the deal.
To ensure that you’re getting a system that performs attribution management across all sources (advertising and organic), make sure you ask the vendor the following questions:
A foundational requirement for attribution management is the ability to track across all online ad sources, not just paid search. And the ability to do that requires your advertising analytics platform to use its own tracking code, instead of relying on the limited information provided through search engine APIs. While the search engine APIs do provide some valuable management information, the data is inadequate when it comes to tracking, classifying and accurately attributing value to the team of ads that led to the sale or conversion.
On August 5th 2009, the first meeting of the Shop.org Attribution Special Interest Group (SIG) kicked-off. The originator of the group is Anne Ashbey, who currently is an independent consultant and previously worked for Harry & David. Anne wanted to bring together people who work for eTailers, technology providers, advertising agencies, as well as online marketing insiders to establish “benchmarks” for companies to follow when doing attribution management. She was kind enough to extend an invitation to me to participate in the group based on ClearSaleing’s thought leadership in Attribution Management and attribution-based advertising analytics platform.
The first meeting included people from companies such as Range Online Media, Rosetta, Under Armour, JC Penny, Google, Rimm Kaufman Group, QVC and American Eagle. The goal of this first meeting was to establish a charter for this SIG. These are the three goals that emerged:
1) Review current multi-channel allocation methodologies for determining incremental sales, highlighting the pros and cons of various approaches;
2) Review available and emerging technologies for tracking and allocation;;
3) Recommend best practices for retailers to implement in their organizations to effectively measure the incremental impact of their marketing dollars.
In order to achieve our charter, we setup two groups during our second meeting: Group 1 is Case Studies, and Group 2 is Technology. Group 1 (Case Studies) is working with a few of the eTailers in the group that are currently performing attribution management to document the process they are using today, and the before and after affects that attribution management has had on their marketing decisions and their organization as a whole.
Group 2 (Technology) is evaluating current technology that exists in the attribution space, as well as identifying features that attribution management should contain in order to track effectively, measure accurately and produce actionable data to improve the bottom line.
Once the case studies are completed, we are going to bring in analytics experts to audit our findings and validate our processes and recommendations. These “analytics experts” will be some of the most recognizable names in the field.
The third meeting took place on September 22nd at the Shop.org Summit in Las Vegas. In this meeting we vetted some of the challenges with creating case studies about attribution, as well as some of the data points that need to be captured to make the case studies worthwhile. One challenge that arose when trying to produce before and after results is using two different time frames. For example, a company might have been using last click attribution in Q4 2008, then switched to multi-touch attribution in Q1 2009. If we compare profit, revenue, sales figures, etc., the increases or decreases we may find may have nothing to do with attribution, but more with the time of year that we are in.
We also identified some data points that we need to have in the case study. We recognized that the companies that take part most likely will not want to share any personally identifiable information, as they don’t want to give away any findings or secrets to their competition. Some of the data points that we agreed need to be captured are the marketing mix that attribution is being compared across, the ad spend, the type of attribution, and the industry the company is in, beyond just knowing they’re an eTailer.
A the end of the third meeting, we all agreed to have firmly established outlines for the retailer case study and technology review prepared for the next meeting, which will take place in later in October 2009. The ultimate goal is to publish the retail case study and technology review sometime in Q1 2010 after the 2009 holiday shopping season has commenced.
If you would like to keep up to date with the findings of this SIG, go to www.shop.org and search for ‘Attribution SIG’.
If you would like to read more about ClearSaleing’s findings in the world of attribution, please visit www.AttributionManagement.com or contact us directly.
Given the critical nature of attribution management to advertising analytics, we have created the Attribution Management Buyer’s Guide for marketers to use when selecting an advertising analytics and optimization platform. The Guide is intended to highlight key attribution management features and functionality that should be available in any advertising analytics solution you select.
This is the first blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This first section focuses on Attribution Variables, which are the key metric(s) by which your advertising analytics solution values conversions and attributes credit across the participating team of ads.
Most advertising analytics packages that offer attribution will attribute credit according to one of the following three metrics: 1) profit; 2) revenue; and 3) conversions. Some packages can attribute all three metrics as well.
There are pros for each one of these variables, and cons for some:
As a follow-up, ask the vendor how they calculate profit. In order to be truly accurate, they should be incorporating your cost of goods sold and cost of advertising into their calculation.
If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you’ve been in a situation like this: You and your marketing colleagues believe giving conversion credit to the last ad click is a flawed attribution method. Therefore, you have investigated or invested in technology that allows you to track beyond the last ad that is clicked so that you can perform attribution over the team of ads that lead to a conversion. With this new tracking in place, you then need to determine the correct attribution models, and it is at this point that if you are like most marketers, you get stuck.
Why do we get stuck? We quickly realize that the argument could be made for many different attribution models. For example, consider the following Purchase Path: a user clicks on an ad for ‘running shoes’, then clicks on an ad for ‘Nike Shox’, followed by clicking on an ad for ‘Nike turbo 7′ and making a purchase. One way to attribute in this scenario would be to give equal credit to all three ads. Another could be to give 20% of the credit to first ad, 30% to the second ad and the final 50% to the final ad. Or a third model could be the reverse, where 50% goes to the first ad then 30% to the second and 20% to the final ad. The point is that we can go on for a while with many different models. So which model is correct?
Marketers can find attribution very frustrating when observing the models above because there doesn’t seem to be a clear cut mathematical solution to what the right answer is. At this point, most marketers then begin to question if attribution is all that it’s cracked up to be given that there doesn’t seem to be any accurate way to solve the correct attribution models.
Attribution Models take some very complicated mathematics to develop. Recently, we conducted a webcast titled ‘Measuring the Immeasurable’ that featured our partner, Vetra Analytics. Vetra is a statistical consultancy made up of PHDs in Statistics and Mathematics that can utilize advanced mathematical modeling to create attribution models.
When solving for attribution, one needs to determine the ‘influence potential’ of each ad click, impression and site visit. In order to determine this potential, one needs to consider many factors, including but not limited to the timing of the ad, decay rate of the ad, if a conversion was made what products were sold, the amount spent of a first time buyer or repeat buyer, etc. In order to determine the influence potential, a model or models need to be built which will help to predict the consumer decisions as accurately as possible.
The statistical models account for one of the most difficult things for marketers to grasp – uncertainty. Uncertainty is all of the factors that may go into a buying decision that are not capable of being measured by your advanced technology. For example, did a friend recommend this product to the consumer? Did they see a billboard or TV commercial? Or did a sales person in the store influence their decision?
By accounting for the uncertainty and building a model that incorporates these factors, we can test the model on a go-forward basis. If the attribution in the model matches the actual results over a sufficient sample size and period, we then know the model that was built is mathematically sound. If the reality does not match the model, we then know the model is not optimal and can be recalibrated.
There are solutions to attribution management that will change the ways in which you manage campaigns. If you are serious about solving attribution because you recognize that accurately attributing credit to your ads will allow you to make more effective media buys, which ultimately lead to greater profits for you and your clients, then you will need to utilize a tool set that implements advanced modeling.
Always remember that a technology is only as good as the people behind it. When implementing an attribution solution, make sure you have the staff that understands how to calibrate it or that the vendor you choose offers services to assist you in building sound models. Your success with attribution is solely dependent on your ability to employ accurate models. If you are serious about solving attribution because you recognize that accurately attributing credit to your ads will allow you to make more effective media buys, which lead to greater profits for you and your clients, then you will need to engage with professionals that have the necessary mathematical skill sets, such as Vetra Analytics.
Getting a new customer is great. Getting a new customer that becomes a repeat customer is even better. When a customer makes a repeat purchase, a marketer needs to consider how to attribute the credit for the future sales back to the marketing that was used to acquire the customer in the first place. Should the original ad(s) that acquired the customer get any credit for future sales? Should the original ad(s) only get credit for the first sale? What if the second product purchased was related to the first product purchased, would that change the attribution model a marketer would use?
During the Attribution Management Forum 2.0 (AMF) on Jan 29th, 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 clicked on a PPC ad on Monday and the next day purchased peanut butter from that site. A little over a week later they clicked on another PPC ad and the next day purchased jelly from that same site.
We provided the audience with 3 attribution models they could choose from. They were as follows:
If you voted for:
A) You believe the first search should get credit for the sale of the peanut butter and jelly because the 2 products bought are so closely related, the first search should get credit for the sale of the jelly as well.
B) You believe the first search gets credit for the first sale and a percentage of the credit for the next sale as well. The second search also deserves a portion of the credit for the second sale.
C) You do not believe in lifetime ad value (LAV) and think that each search gets credit for only the sale that directly follows it.
In almost all of the groups polled, over 60% chose attribution rule B, which favors giving credit for the sale of jelly to the first and second ads. The exact percentage breakdowns were not chosen in this exercise.
When looking at this scenario there are a few other factors that one should consider. One factor is the type of search ad that was clicked on prior to the sale of jelly. For example, if it was a branded term, I believe more people would have opted to give full credit for the sale of jelly back to the first ad. The logic for doing this is that this customer chose search as their preferred method to navigate back to the site that they originally bought peanut butter from vs. using the address bar, an organic result, or a bookmark.
Another factor that might change the way people voted is if they knew the second search was for “jelly”, which is a general search term. The use of a general search might be an indicator that the consumer was not thinking of the company they purchased peanut butter from at all. Therefore, if they did not have that company in mind when they did the search for jelly, perhaps all of the credit for the second sale should go to the second ad.
In AMF 1.0, we presented a similar scenario but did not show the type of products that were sold. In that forum, the majority of the audience still chose to attribute some credit for the second sale back to the original ad. I would have thought knowing the sale of the second product was complimentary to the sale of the first product would have made more people opt to give all of the credit to the first ad.
These types of scenarios and rules are why we continue to strive to generate some consensus around Attribution Management. If you would like to learn more about these scenarios or the scenarios from the previous Forum, please visit www.AttributionManagement.com. Additionally, we love to hear from our audience, so please fill us in on what your thoughts about this scenario may be.
What is Twitter? You could ask 100 Tweeters that question and end up with 100 different answers. Some might say it is micro blogging. Others say it is a way to keep your ‘followers’ up to date on your comings and goings. Another group might say it is a waste of time.
As an online marketer, I want to know if Twitter is a bona fide advertising source. Sure I know I could tweet about events going on at my company or clients in hope that those Tweets drive my followers to take certain action. But is it really an advertising source that deserves to receive credit for conversion if I can tie the conversion to the fact that the consumer read the tweet?
During the Attribution Management Forum 2.0 (AMF) on Jan 29th, 2009, we posed that question to an audience of hundreds of senior online marketers by presenting the following two scenarios, and we asked them to vote on how they would attribute conversion credit if they knew a tweet was involved in that consumers buying process.
Scenario 1:
In Scenario 1, a consumer received a tweet that alerted them to the fact that they could save 20% on Nike Shox if they bought them from the Finish Line by 12am tomorrow night. The consumer clicked on the link in the tweet, but did not buy the Nike Shox at that moment. Later on they went to a search engine and searched for “Woman’s Nike Shox,” clicked on an ad for the Finish Line and bought a pair of Nike Shox before the 12am deadline and saved the 20% that was tweeted about on Twitter.
We asked the audience to select the best attribution rule out of the following options:
Over 67% in both groups we polled, according to their indicated level of experience with attribution management, believe option “A” is the best rule. This vote shows that these senior online marketers do indeed believe that Twitter is a bona fide advertising source as they are willing to give half of the credit for this conversion to Twitter.
Less than 8% in any group we polled voted for option “C”, which totally excluded Twitter from receiving any credit for the conversion. This is further proof that senior online marketers do value Twitter as an advertising source worthy of conversion credit.
Scenario 2:
In scenario 2, the tweet was exactly the same as the tweet in scenario 1. In scenario 2, the consumer clicked on the link in the tweet, but did not convert at that moment. Later on they used their address bar to navigate directly back to the Finish Line’s website, purchased a pair of Nike Shox and received the 20% discount because they bought before the deadline.
We asked the audience to select the best attribution rule out of the following options:
Over 66% in both groups we polled, according to their indicated level of experience with attribution management, believe option “B” is the best rule. This vote shows once again that these senior online marketers do indeed believe that Twitter is a bona fide advertising source as they are willing to give 100% of the credit for this conversion to Twitter and 0% of the conversion credit to the address bar.
Less than 7% in any group we polled voted for option “C”, which totally excluded Twitter from receiving any credit for the conversion. This is further proof that senior online marketers do value Twitter as an advertising source worthy of conversion credit.
These types of scenarios and rules are why we continue to strive to generate some consensus around Attribution Management. If you would like to learn more about these scenarios or the scenarios from the previous Forum, please visit www.AttributionManagement.com. Additionally, we love to hear from our audience, so please fill us in on what your thoughts about this scenario may be.
Join the Attribution Management Forum! The next webinar in this groundbreaking industry series takes place Wednesday March 10th, 2010.
Register Now »Independent technology research firm Forrester Research, Inc.
selected vendors for a 44-criteria evaluation to determine the leaders in the attribution management field.
ClearSaleing Takes "Top Honors"
ClearSaleing received the highest scores in both the “Current Offering” and “Strategy” categories. The company also received a perfect 5.0 score on the strength of its management team.
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In the world of online marketing, Attribution Management is the process of properly identifying and valuing the chain of marketing initiatives and advertisements that lead to a sale or conversion.
ClearSaleing Leaps Ahead in Attribution Management: Watch as ClearSaleing Co-Founder and CIO, Adam Goldberg, ta.. http://bit.ly/yfiA6 2009-09-27
