If you want to increase your odds of being considered, and even more importantly, increase your odds of winning, then you need to engage consumers as early as possible in the buying cycle…

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Many of the things that we want to know or try requires that we set up a test. Tests typically need to run for a period that is twice as long as your average sales cycle (i.e., if your average sales cycle is seven days, it would be best to let that test run for a full two weeks). This allows the ads that ran on the seventh day of the test a full sales cycle, which is enough time to fairly judge the results…

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Attribution management begins with a tracking technology in place that allows you to track both clicks and view-throughs, and tracks beyond the last click. Here’s an example of the type of data available on a particular order if an attribution management technology is in place….

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We at ClearSaleing have spent the last 4 years touting the importance of moving past last click when it comes to analyzing your online media. Back when we first started in 2006, it seemed like no one else had begun to use this concept, let alone discuss it. In 2007, I was invited to speak at Search Engine Strategies New York on the topic of attribution, as it pertained to B2B firms. From that point on, I was invited to speak at a lot of conferences, such as SMX, SES, Search Insider Summit, DMA, eTail, and more. Now it seems as if you cannot attend any marketing related conference without several sessions dedicated to measuring beyond the last click, i.e. Attribution Management.

At the same time attribution was picking up steam on the conference circuit, and being discussed by research firms like Forrester Research and Jupiter Research (now owned by Forrester), the search engines began to pay attention to this topic, starting with Yahoo. In the Yahoo advertising interface, they began to represent not only the conversions at the keyword level, but also what they called an assist. An assist is when a keyword is used in a purchase path, but was not the last keyword clicked prior to conversion. After that, Microsoft, through the Atlas institute, coined the term ‘Engagement Mapping’, which utilized the Atlas ad server to provide attribution data across search and display media. Then, in 2010, Google entered the foray into attribution with the Google Search Funnel product, which performs like Yahoo, but has a lot more analytics around the data to dive deeper into these paths.

One question that we often get is, “I don’t have enough money to invest in a product like ClearSaleing, so what else is out there?”  Or, “My company is still skeptical that attribution would benefit us.  Is there a way I can prove that our customers do navigate paths and attribution would be beneficial?”  One product worth taking a look at that is free is the Google Search Funnel product. Though this product is far from perfect, and leaves a lot open to interpretation, any product that shows beyond the last click can help you to improve the performance of your overall campaigns.

From there, we usually get several follow up questions:

- What would be the first thing you focus on when using the Google Search Funnel product?

When we look at Purchase Path reporting from ClearSaleing’s technology and focus solely on paths that involve AdWords ads, one thing jumps out at us across our entire client base: when there are 2 or more AdWords ads used in a Purchase Path, the last ad clicked is more often than not one of our clients branded terms. A branded term is a company’s name or misspelling/typo of it. When we look at the terms that precede the branded term, they are mainly general, product specific, need specific, or a model number.  Usually they are non-branded terms, as seen in the graphic below.

Therefore, under a last click world, branded terms end up stealing a lot of credit from the non-branded terms that preceded them. So, if I was going to look at one thing in the Search Funnels report, I would look at paths that end in brand terms to see how often non-brand terms come before them. Then I would look at how those non-brand terms are valued under last click and determine if they should be given more credit. We have found that when consumers use brand terms at the end of a Purchase Path, they are doing so to navigate back to the site they’ve already decided to buy from, therefore, it makes sense to credit the ads that were NOT used simply for navigation purposes.

- When I look at the path length report in Google, it shows me the number of conversions that took one click, two clicks, three clicks, four clicks and so on, it shows that most of my conversions occurred with just one click. Does this mean that attribution is not something I need to worry about?

There are a few things needed to keep in mind when looking at these reports:

- This data only pertains to Google AdWords, so if a client went from a Yahoo ad to a Google ad, it would be represented in Google as a one click path, when in reality, it was a 2 click path.

- On a similar note, paid search isn’t the only advertising source out there. So, if you’re using anything outside of paid search – display, affiliates, shopping engines, etc. – these are not being represented in the paths.

- At ClearSaleing, we use three simple categories to place ads in: Introducers – the first ad a person clicks or sees en route to conversion; Closers – the last ad a person clicks/sees prior to conversion; Influencers – the ads in between Introducers and Closers. When we acquire a new customer that has been using a last click attribution method prior to coming to us, they cannot justify spending money on Introducers and Influencers; they can only justify spending on Closers. You are likely in the same boat. Therefore, their data in the beginning looks as if attribution does not occur.  One thing that we get our customers to do that you should also test is to activate some of the more general terms in your account, and with the use of Google’s Search Funnels, see if these types of terms show their value by being an Introducer or Influencer in other paths. Over time, our clients generally discover their customers walk down more paths than when they started with us because they have the data to support investing on ads and ad sources that introduce and influence.

- Using Google Search Funnels, I found a collection of keywords that provide a lot of assists, but barely close. What should I bid for these terms?

Unfortunately, this is a really difficult question to answer. If you were a company that only sold one product, or every product you sold produced the same amount of profit, you could figure out what these assists are worth. If you sell many different products with many different margins, it’s impossible to know the value of these assists. The ideal method for evaluating these would be to know how much profit was earned on a conversion the keyword assisted, so you could assign it some profit credit and then you could come up with a bid to meet your business goals. Google will most likely never be able to produce profit figures because that would require companies to share margin data with Google, which is highly unlikely. Google could, however, take the revenue earned on that conversion (assuming you are an etailer) and attribute a portion of that to the assists, so that you could make a more accurate bid decision.

Though the Google Search Funnel product is not perfect, it does provide a lot of valuable reports that if one takes the time to use them and analyze the data, one can certainly improve the performance of their campaigns. If you have experience using the Search Funnel product, we welcome your comments, or if you have questions about attribution, as always, feel free to contact us.

On Wednesday, May 12 at 1pm EST, ClearSaleing will be presenting a webinar on the most common myths and misconceptions by attribution’s supporters and detractors. Here are the 12 most common misconceptions that will be addressed during this webinar:

1. I don’t have an attribution problem
2. The last click is the chosen one
3. There are no good methods for assigning attribution credit
4. There are no good tools for attribution
5. Attribution can be done with web analytics
6. Attribution can be done in a silo
7. Attribution is about buying the right mix of media
8. Attribution pulls dollars away from search
9. Path analysis is a waste of time
10. A/B testing is effective for attribution
11. Attribution Management takes too much time to be worth it
12. Attribution Management is a silver bullet

If you are interested in learning more about these topics, please join us for this free webcast to hear ClearSaleing’s point of view on these items.

For this post, I want to go one step further and explain how you can use several different types of technologies for operational and project-based attribution. The tables below should help you select the most appropriate technology based on your own attribution needs.

Operational attribution allows an advertiser to see all the steps or clicks that led to conversion in real-time and continuously attributes conversion credit across the team of ads. The three most common technologies used for operational attribution are display ad servers, website analytics and advertising analytics.

Continue reading on Search Engine Land site…

Read the entire article on the Search Engine Land Blog…

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

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:

• Even - where conversion credit is spread equally across all participating ads in the Purchase Path
• Even with Exclusions - the even model with the additional ability to exclude specific ads, such as Branded terms, at the end of the Purchase Path
• Path Length – the ability to assign specific percentages to participating ads based on the number of steps in the path
• Rules Based - the ability to assign specific percentages based on the types of ads and the number of steps that are used in each step along the path

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

Part 4 & 5 – Display Advertising and Exclusions

Part 6 & 7 – Purchase Path Stages and Time

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:

• – How is time factored in your tool’s attribution models?
• – What kind of flexibility do I have?
• – Can you tell me the time from first ad to conversion? Last ad to conversion?
• – Can you tell me the time between ad clicks, ad impressions, direct visits, and organic visits in the Purchase Path?
• – How long do your cookies last?
• – How do I know the appropriate window of time to give credit back to an ad?

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.