This webcast highlights key attribution management features and functionality to look for when selecting and advertising analytics solution.
Attribution management — the process of tracking, assembling and properly valuing an entire team of online ads as they lead to conversions — has become a critical component of advertising analytics. Identifying which ad deserves “credit” for the sale or conversion has never been easy. The once-popular “last-click” conversion model has given way to a more sophisticated approach that evaluates the ‘influence potential’ of each ad click, impression, or site visit. With proper attribution, marketers can accurately measure, improve, and optimize the profit and ROI generated from cross-media advertising investments. But to do so requires the right advertising analytics solution. How do you evaluate the various options? Which attribution management features and capabilities should marketers look for in advertising analytics packages?
This webcast highlights key attribution management features and functionality to look for when selecting and advertising analytics solution, including:
• tracking capability
• reporting functions
• relevance of ads along Purchase Paths
• basic and custom attribution modeling
• data storage
Find out what you need to know – and what questions to ask – when considering an advertising analytics solution for attribution management.
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:
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:
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:
– 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.
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 fourth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This fourth section focuses on Banner/Display Advertising.
Most companies have been determining if banner advertising is effective by measuring it the same way they do their pay per click ads, meaning they look at the number of times the banner gets clicked compared to its conversions to its cost. When evaluated under this method, banner advertising rarely looks as if it is performing well enough to continue to invest ad dollars towards. However, there is a hidden value in banners that can only be discovered through proper attribution.
The real value of the banners is their impressions, which help to build brand awareness and to introduce people to your product and services. It’s after being exposed to banners that consumers want to learn more about your business. Typically, after banner exposure, the next activity is to do either a natural search or click on a PPC ad so the user can get to your site, rather than clicking on the banner itself.
If you’re valuing banners the same way you do paid search ads, you will never see the influence that banners have on guiding people down the path to conversion.
If you are doing banner advertising, it is a must that you select an attribution management vendor that measures a banner’s effectiveness not only in terms of clicks, but also the influence impressions have on consumers. A banner ad can have influence even if no click occurs; therefore, preferred attribution management systems should be able to incorporate banner view‐throughs and banner clicks in their attribution management offering.
Attribution Management Buyers Guide Part 5 – Exclusions
At times, certain ads in a purchase path should not be given credit for the eventual sale. The most common example of this is when a paid search ad for a branded term is clicked at the end of a path, where the branded ad would be excluded because it is simply used for navigational purposes. The user is already sold on purchasing from your site after clicking on one or a series of your ads, then later types in your brand name and clicks on the paid ad to get back to your site before ultimately converting.
By having an attribution management system that allows for exclusions, you can ensure that you’re giving credit to ads involved in the sales process, not the navigation process, and your attribution calculations will be more accurate. Look for a vendor that offers the ability to exclude clicks that should not receive credit.
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:
Which ad sources does your system track?
Do you place tracking code on my website?
If the vendor doesn’t offer tracking code, they are solely reliant on information that comes through the APIs of ad sources. The only ad sources that offer APIs today are search engines; therefore, a system that does this is only capable of doing attribution across paid search.
Do you get all of your data from the APIs of the ad sources?
Again, much the like question above, this is an indicator that they only track paid search.
Do you track direct and organic visits to my site as well?
In order to have a full view of attribution, direct and organic visits must be included.
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.
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:
Profit:
-Pro - Businesses are in business to do one thing – generate profit. Therefore, anytime you can measure a business activity according to the profit it drives, the better you understand the value of that activity. The same is true for advertising – if you understand the profit a particular ad generates, then you definitively know if that ad is worth continuing to buy or not.
-Con - There are none, however, we realize that calculating profit can be difficult for some business entities.
Revenue:
-Pro – If you cannot get to profit, this is the next best metric. Though revenue does not definitively tell you if you’re making profit on those ads, you could infer that considerable revenue is being made on that ad, so you could continue to invest in that ad.
-Con – Just because revenue appears to be trending in a positive direction does not mean you are also producing a profit. By not considering your margin and cost of goods sold, you could be misled into investing in ad that is not producing profit.
Conversions:
-Pro – Allows you to see which ads were involved in the highest number of conversions. This may shed light on top of the funnel types of ads that generally do not receive conversion credit, and this can help expose the type of value they have to the success of other ads.
-Con – Since all conversions are not created equal, it’s difficult to understand what impact any ad is having according to conversions on the bottom line. It is nearly impossible to perform accurate attribution with only this metric at your disposal.
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.
Forrester Consulting recently examined the total economic impact and potential ROI that enterprises may realize by deploying ClearSaleing's advanced advertising analytics and attribution management platform. Register for the webinar to see the full analysis and the benefits from implementing an attribution management solution.
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.
Download the Report »
About Attribution Management
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.
