Columbus, OH (PRWEB) September 22, 2010

Following directly on the heels of the release of the Forrester Consulting study that showcased a 605% ROI for companies using ClearSaleing’s software, advertising analytics leader ClearSaleing announced this week the addition of two new team members, both experts in the technical and theoretical aspects of attribution management. ClearSaleing is expanding the company’s already growing attribution management practice by naming Alphonse Okossi as the company’s Technical Director of Media Mix Modeling and Data Analytics, and Thiyag Chinnappan as its Director, Media Mix Modeling and Data Analytics.

“Customers often come to us with attribution questions based on their own complex marketing spend,” said Adam Goldberg, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at ClearSaleing. “They want to know answers to questions like, ‘How much credit should I attribute to impressions in a Purchase Path vs. a click?’ and ‘How should I allocate my budget across the different marketing channels available to me?’ With the growth in ClearSaleing’s Media Mix Modeling and Data Analytics practice, we will be better able to provide customers with specific statistically-sound solutions and attribution models that will allow them to more accurately assign purchase credit, identify profitable Purchase Paths, and eliminate underperforming ads or ad types. The more accurate our customer’s attribution models are, the more accurate their decisions will be about what works and what does not, which leads to greater profitability.”

“We’re delighted to welcome Alphonse and Thiyag to the ClearSaleing team,” Goldberg continued, “and know that our customers will directly benefit from the insights and experience they bring.”

ALPHONSE OKOSSI
Alphonse Okossi, ClearSaleing’s new Technical Director of Media Mix Modeling and Data Analytics, will spearhead the company’s technical efforts in developing and implementing creative statistical methods to solve offline/online media mix and attribution-related issues. Okossi’s career path highlights more than 15 years of experience in marketing analytics, data mining, predictive modeling, risk management, forecasting and optimization. His most recent role prior to joining ClearSaleing was as Managing Partner of Planning Constructs, Inc., where he led development of the company’s marketing mix and price promotion modeling platform, including managing the programming team and designing demand forecasting and simulation web tool.

Prior to Planning Constructs, Okossi was the Analytical Product Development Manager for Information Resources, Inc., where he lead and conducted hands-on statistical modeling and related software application projects for price promotion, marketing mix, assortment, seasonality, incrementality and related forecasting/simulation web tools development. Prior to this position, Okossi held various high-level analytics consulting positions, providing web-enabled statistical analyses for clients, including Wells Fargo and JC Penney. Okossi, whose career started in the finance industry, holds a Ph.D. in Economics and an MA in International Finance and Trade from State University of New York at Albany.

THIYAG CHINNAPPAN
In his role as Director of Media Mix Modeling and Data Analytics, Thiyag Chinnappan will be responsible for leading the company’s practice and product strategy related to advanced data analytics. Chinnappan’s work experience is rich in analytics and media mix modeling. Prior to joining ClearSaleing, Chinnappan served as client manager in the analytics consulting division of The Nielsen Company where he developed and managed marketing and media mix activities for Kraft Canada, among other clients.

Before his work with Nielsen, Chinnappan was a project manager in marketplace analytics for HAVI Global Solutions, where he provided tactical data analysis and campaign launch insights for clients including McDonalds. Chinnappan, who holds an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, also holds a diploma in Project Management from Northwestern University.

CLEARSALEING ANNOUNCES NEW SERVICE OFFERINGS, TEI REPORT
With the addition of Okossi and Chinnappan, ClearSaleing plans to add a host of new offerings to its service roster, including improving existing attribution performance using profit weighting from Media Mix models, performing custom online/offline media mix analyses, simulating and predicting future sales using demand forecast functionality, and conducting custom analytics studies using advanced econometric techniques. Additionally, ClearSaleing will also develop custom Analytics Dashboards to allow clients immediate access to data and insights on specific online purchase behavior and target customers.

ClearSaleing also recently announced the release of a Forrester Consulting study detailing the value that ClearSaleing provides to its clients. The study, titled “The Total Economic Impact™ of ClearSaleing”, indicates a 605 percent adjusted return-on-investment for companies engaging in ClearSaleing’s attribution management offering, along with additional benefits of time savings, eliminating waste and more. Forrester conducted interviews with four ClearSaleing clients and found that, by using ClearSaleing, these companies experienced a net present value of more than $2.3 million, in addition to improving efficiencies in decision making and media buying and increasing productivity in automation and reporting. The full study is available for free on the ClearSaleing site.

ABOUT CLEARSALEING
ClearSaleing has been named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES (Search Engine Strategies) Awards. ClearSaleing’s advertising portfolio management platform helps marketers identify ways to more effectively and profitably allocate ad spend across a complex mix of online advertising investments.

ClearSaleing is a thought leader in the growing scientific field of attribution management and publishes www.AttributionManagement.com that provides a rich repository of ClearSaleing and externally published articles, white papers and other material focused exclusively on attribution management.

ClearSaleing’s unique ability to give marketers telescopic insight into their online ad investment is attracting major brand customers such as American Greetings and Nationwide Insurance. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, please visit www.ClearSaleing.com.

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…Continue reading article on All About ROI Magazine online

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.

All reports are not created equally nor are they calculated the same way.  In an attribution world, there are two types of reports, ones that factor in attribution and ones that don’t.

The two types of reports have two different purposes:

• Operational Reports
• Performance Reports

Operational Reports

Operational reports don’t factor in attribution.  Operational reports are reports used to measure how your business is doing.  Operational reports are used to ensure there is nothing ‘broken.’  Operational reports include reports run from your ecommerce system, most traditional web analytics reports and reports that are compiled from several different sources.

Performance Reports

Attribution is crucial for performance reports.  Performance reports are used to judge how well your advertising is performing.  Performance reports also take into consideration latency and latent conversions described in my last post.

Both reports are extremely useful.  The problem arises when you try to compare an operational report to a performance report.  One common example of this  that I see is when a new ClearSaleing customer attempts to compare a report from their web database, an order report or a booking report, to the ‘All Sources’ screen of the Performance tab or any other report that factors in attribution.

These two reports will never ‘match,’ nor should they.  Operations reports give 100% of credit to the last click, 100% credit to the date and source of conversion (no attribution).  Performance reports divide up the credit and attributes it to each date and source that led up to the conversion (attribution).

So before you try to compare two reports, take a step back.  Think about the report that you are trying to compare to a performance (attribution) report.  Does the report factor in attribution?  If the report is coming from your ecommerce database or booking engine, or even your traditional web analytics, it probably does not use attribution.

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.

Conceptually, attribution is easy to understand.  Metrics are calculated based on allocation rules.  At its simplest, attribution is based on even allocation.

But taking a look ‘under the hood’ shows that even this basic attribution model can be quite complicated.   To do this, let’s isolate one order:

One product sold to Google Affiliate Network:

Two clicks in the path:

Exclusions (‘All But First’, meaning we exclude giving credit to that source unless it’s the first click in a path, so the first click (Direct) will get ½ the credit):

Correct Calculation: ($224.00 * .50) = $112.00 (Revenue)

Then, back out 50% of the total cost of goods sold and 100 % of Ad Spend to get to the total net profit, which in this case is negative.

It may seem confusing that the calculation shows ½ the revenue, then backs out ½ the cost of goods sold, yet backs out 100% of Ad Spend.  However, this is the only way to accurately value each advertising source.  Traditional web analytics tend to under-credit some sources and over-credit the last click sources.  Search engine reports can over-credit ads, especially when people cross search engines in their research.

In the example below, both Yahoo and Google would take credit for the sale:

Taking complete Ad Spend into consideration when calculating profit is crucial to accurately value each paid media source, but there is one other consideration.  What about the clicks that don’t cost anything?  That is where Exclusions come in to play.

If you exclude clicks that don’t cost anything, the story changes. If the exclusions had been set to exclude all non-cost clicks, the earlier example would tell a different story.

Correct Calculation: ($224.00 * .100) = $224.00 (Revenue)

Then, back out 100% of the total cost of goods sold and 100 % of Ad Spend to get to the total net profit.  In this case, the conversion would have been profitable.

Excluding giving credit to the clicks that do not cost you anything gives you the ability to analyze and optimize your total marketing budget.  It answers the questions, ‘Where is money being spent making the most money?’, and ‘Where is it losing money?’

The good news is that you can still see how the impact of the non-cost clicks affects the value of each ad source by switching the display option.

Tip of the Month:  Exclude your non-cost clicks to optimize your budget to your Ad Spend.  Then use the complete Purchase Path to see the impact of the non-cost clicks on the value of the different ad sources.  It is the best of both worlds.

Length- 51 minutes

Watch the Webcast- (registration required)

Join ClearSaleing CIO and Co-Founder, Adam Goldberg, along with VP of Biz Development, Dustin Engel, as they discuss various approaches to Attribution Management. As the need for implementing an Attribution Management solution has continued to increase, it is important to understand the various offerings available to decide which solution is the best for you.

Watch this free webcast to learn:

The various approaches to attribution, with pros and cons for each offering:

• Ad Servers
• Web Analytics
• Consulting Groups
• Technologies
• The difference between Operational (day to day) vs. Project-based (strategic, high-level) attribution
• On the back end, what do you do with the data?
• Which solution would be best for you given your current environment need

Watch the Webcast- (registration required)

Background

Back in the good old days of marketing, marketers made decisions solely based on their gut feelings. They’d create their marketing and media plans, and then print out a huge spreadsheet filled with marketing launches, ad buys, and creatives for the year.  The agency and the client would gather around the conference room table and debate one approach versus another until they came to an agreement on the marketing plan for the year.   The campaigns would be launched, budgets would be depleted and next year, it happened all over again.

But there were very few ways to accurately gauge the success of a particular campaign and to correlate it to increases in sales.  The marketers’ own experience and gut feelings were about the only criteria on which marketers based their decisions, as there was no effective way of gathering credible information on who actually saw their ads and campaigns and what they did as a result.  Basically, you spent the budget, and next year, if the company was still around, the budget was renewed or maybe even increased.  And then the planning process repeated itself.

Enter Web Analytics and the Last Click Mentality

Thankfully, things changed when web analytics entered the marketing picture early in the 21^st century.  Web analytics is great for helping marketers make decisions, especially those decisions related to improving the user experience once a visitor gets to your Web site.  One way that web analytics does this is by showing you the sites that are driving traffic to your Web site, also known as the referrers.

Web analytics also does a decent job of evaluating the success of your online marketing campaigns, but the information it is able to provide in this area does have its limitations.  Because most web analytics packages were built to monitor traffic once it arrives at your web site, they do not give you the full picture of everything that happened before a visitor got to your Web site—these packages can only show you the ‘last click’ referrer.

The reality is that only a small portion of your visitors do one thing–like visit one Web site, click on one ad, or do one search on one search engine–before they get to your site and convert.  The average visitor is likely to take several steps on the way to your website.  Unfortunately, web analytics is incapable of showing you the full path your visitors took before arriving on your site.

Attribution Management Widens the Funnel

By focusing only on the last click analytics that typical web analytics programs provide, savvy marketers may inadvertently be strangling the top of the funnel.  Consider a common trend of user behavior within a conversion process.  The graphic below shows hypothetical funnel statistics for a site with a well-designed checkout process:

Step 1 – Step 2                 Less than 10% conversion (add to cart)

Step 2 – Step 3                  Greater than 70% convert from this point (begin checkout)

Step 3 – on                         Greater than 90% convert from this point

Think about this:  If you could get even a slightly higher conversion rate from Step 1 to Step 2, you could exponentially increase overall conversion rates based on the conversion rate of the subsequent steps.

By counting on last click attribution that typical web analytics packages provide, most marketers cannot justify widening the top of the funnel with general keyword ads or banner buys.  This is because last click analytics focuses on the last thing that a visitor did before he/she converted.  Generally this is either clicking on a branded search result or coming back directly to the site by typing the URL into the browser or having the site bookmarked.

But smart marketers, armed with accurate attribution knowledge, can make the case for the more general keywords and the banner buys.  They know that many people need to do research before they make even a small purchase online, and they recognize that often, this research starts off with a very general search or an exposure to a banner.  Then, as the potential customer learns more about your brand and company and gets closer to making a purchase decision, they are more likely to get back to your site via a branded search when they are ready to purchase or convert.

Attribution Data Helps You Catch them Early

When the stakes are high and competition is fierce, marketers must seek out any advantage you can find.  Accurate attribution data presents one such advantage.  By having access to visitors in their early steps in the research, marketers who use attribution data are able to widen the top of the funnel AND market to potential customers earlier in the sales cycle.

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

Original Date- December 1, 2009

Length- 58 minutes

Fewer than one third of online marketers are happy with their ability to measure interactive media. The main reason is that the industry standard of crediting the last click or last interaction is flawed. Recently, several leading players in the industry have introduced the concept of attribution measurement, which assigns credit to multiple touchpoints in a consumer’s purchase path.

Forrester Research, Inc. Senior Analyst Emily Riley, a leading authority on the topic, will be our guest speaker and present an overview of her recently published Interactive Attribution Wave. Emily will review the shifting trends in the market, highlight key players, and show marketers how to gain valuable insights by adopting attribution measurement practices. This is the first time attribution vendors have been evaluated, yielding groundbreaking insights that are valuable for interactive marketers, vendors, and publishers alike.

Watch the Webcast- (registration required)