This webcast will focus on showing how using advanced statistical models can allow one to build attribution models that can then be tested.
The webcast will be co-hosted by Adam Goldberg, ClearSaleing co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, and Dr. Purush Papatla, President of Vetra Analytics, which is a high-end statistical consultancy group that is partnered with ClearSaleing.
Mr. Goldberg and Dr. Papatla will show how using high-end statistical models can allow one to build attribution models that specifically address how to account for:
• Social media
• Word of Mouth
• The differences between short Purchase Paths and long Purchase Paths
Like the previous Forums, there will be some interactive elements. In the first 2 Forums, we had the audience participate by voting on various attribution scenarios. In AMF 3.0, we are going to introduce methods that can be used to solve various attribution scenarios.
Search marketing continues to dominate the online marketing landscape even as other digital strategies gain traction. For marketers, the ability to accurately test and measure the role of search in a customer’s purchase decision is more important than ever as they diversify their online marketing efforts in response to the growing popularity of Twitter, Facebook and other online channels.
“With the economy, more people are searching for discount-related terms” and fewer for product terms….
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:
ClearSaleing Earns Highest Score in Both Current Offering and Strategy Categories among Interactive Attribution Vendors
Columbus, Ohio (PRWEB) October 26, 2009 — ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, today announced that the company has been recognized by Forrester Research, Inc. as an Interactive Attribution “Leader” in an independent report: “The Forrester WaveTM: Interactive Attribution, Q4 2009″ (October 2009)”. ClearSaleing received the highest scores in both the “Current Offering” and “Strategy” categories. It also garnered a 5.0 out of a possible 5.0 score for its strength of management team.
Forrester described ClearSaleing’s attribution offering as “a standalone attribution tool with rich modeling,” saying it “comes closest to offering a complete solution…” The report also says ClearSaleing’s technology is “easy to use, sophisticated, and relevant for a wide variety of interactive marketers” and notes that “ClearSaleing is an easy-to-install standalone product rather than a feature of a larger offering, but it is still relatively affordable and scalable for a range of clients…. Through a partnership with Vetra Analytics, ClearSaleing offers the best of both rich custom modeling and easy-to-use reporting.”
“ClearSaleing is delighted to be recognized by Forrester,” says ClearSaleing co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Adam Goldberg. “Since we began, ClearSaleing has been working steadily to develop and deliver technology that marketers can put to use immediately to optimize campaigns and realize the greatest ROI. We believe attribution management is the linchpin of any successful marketing strategy, combining customer insight with smart campaign management.”
The Forrester report also stated that “All of the clients we spoke with were fiercely loyal to ClearSaleing, citing its high level of service and its commitment to high-quality insights.”
Based on the increasing recognition among marketing executives as to the importance of attribution management and ClearSaleing’s position as a leader in advertising analytics technology, the Company has also been successful in forming partnerships with large interactive agencies to offer its attribution management platform to their customers.
“We did an exhaustive search and review of a wide range of attribution management solutions that we could use to optimize the performance of complex, cross-media campaigns that we manage for our customers,” said Dustin Engel, Vice President, Strategy and Media, Range Online Media. “And we found that ClearSaleing had by far the most robust advertising analytics platform, built from the mindset of attribution management,” Engel said. “The ClearSaleing Attribution Management platform has received enormous interest from our customer base and has already been implemented for a few of our clients, with many other customers lining up to implement our attribution strategies utilizing the platform.”
Named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES 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.
ClearSaleing is “awe inspiring and illuminating” according to the Practical Ecommerce (PeC) blog. The PeC is a weekly blog post that evaluates different products and services designed to improve one’s Ecommerce business. Read the entire article and watch the video clip demonstrating some of ClearSaleing’s strengths in attribution modeling, and profit tracking.
In recent months, many more online marketers have realized that the “last click effect” can be hazardous to the success of their online marketing campaigns.
This article from Practice Ecommerce details the problems surrounding the last click effect along with ways to avoid it. Some of the solutions include using the latest attribution management tools and technology.
ClearSaleing and Vetra Analytics Publish the First Internet Retail Version of the American Attribution Index at the Shop.Org 2009 Annual Summit
Internet Retail AAI Measures the Relative Influence of Online Media Sources on Campaign ROI and Profit
Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) September 21, 2009 — ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, and Vetra Analytics, a marketing analytics provider, today published the first ever Internet Retail version of its American Attribution Index (AAI). The Internet Retail AAI measures the relative effectiveness (purchase attribution) of each online media source and influence factor on online consumer conversion, serving as a valuable benchmark for CMOs and marketing executives.
The first Internet Retail AAI, generated from more than 790,135 retail consumer purchase paths during the 1st quarter of 2009, shows that many types of media sources contribute to and influence a consumer’s purchase decision. Specifically, branded and non-branded SEO, branded and non-branded paid search ads, comparison shopping engines, email, display and affiliates all play an important role in influencing purchase decisions among retail customers.
CIO, Adam Goldberg, and VP of Biz Development, Sylvie Moreau, talk to attendees at the Shop.org Annual Summit
“The particular importance of both branded and non-branded organic search, together representing over 60 percent of the purchase influence factor for retailers, was probably the most surprising result from the initial Retail AAI,” says Randy Smith, ClearSaleing’s co-founder and President. “What was also noteworthy was the cumulative impact of multiple marketing and advertising touches from a range of media sources that cause retail customers to ultimately purchase. These sources work synergistically. Remove any one and you can impact the relative influence of all,” he adds.
“We are very excited to continue the quarterly publication of the American Attribution Indices so we can begin to understand how seasonality impacts consumer purchase decisions and media effectiveness, particularly for retailers during the upcoming holiday surge,” says Dr. Purush Papatla, President of Vetra Analytics. Vetra built the sophisticated attribution models that are the foundation of the indices. “By delivering an actionable, retail-specific version of the American Attribution Index, we will help retail CMOs make better media selection and allocation decisions that will positively impact both their top and bottom lines,” says Papatla.
ClearSaleing and Vetra will publish the Internet Retail version of the American Attribution Index (AAI) on a quarterly basis using a widget application. They will also publish relevant retail attribution management news and items of interest along with the Index. Subscriptions will be available beginning in the 4th quarter to the Internet Retail AAI.
ClearSaleing and Vetra would like to encourage retailers attending Shop.Org to become members of the AAI group and are offering special charter member subscription rates through October 31, 2009.
Customized Indices
ClearSaleing can also provide etailers with a custom AAI that will take into account the etailer’s operation size, its customers’ behavioral patterns in the past, its price points and other factors to enable etailers to have an optimum analysis of their ROI performance.
ClearSaleing Attribution Management Platform
The AAI is based on ClearSaleing’s attribution management platform technology which allows marketers to design and input their own attribution management model to fit their industry’s needs, precisely mapping the Purchase PathTM from a customer’s first action to their conversion and attributing a relative value to each marketing element along the way that contributed to that conversion.
About Vetra Analytics
Vetra Analytics is a marketing analytics consulting firm that specializes in analytics R&D, dashboards and customer data-based models. Created by Dr. Purush Papatla, Ph.D., the Vetra team brings years of global consulting and publishing experience to its clients. With this leadership, Vetra has the ability to dig deep into your data repositories and locate key insights that can optimize your marketing decisions, enhance your customer satisfaction and increase ROI on marketing efforts. For more information, please visit www.VetraAnalytics.com.
About ClearSaleing
Named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES 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.
ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, and Vetra Analytics, a marketing analytics provider, today announced the launch of the Internet Retail version of their American Attribution Index (AAI). The Internet Retail AAI measures the relative influence power that different online marketing vehicles have on consumer conversions, leading to ROI and profit.
Las Vegas, NV, Shop.Org Annual Summit (PRWEB) September 14, 2009 — ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, and Vetra Analytics, a marketing analytics provider, today announced the launch of the Internet Retail version of their American Attribution Index (AAI). The Internet Retail AAI measures the relative influence power that different online marketing vehicles have on consumer conversions, leading to ROI and profit.
The Internet Retail AAI measures the relative influence of branded paid search, non-branded paid search, branded display advertising, non-branded display advertising, affiliate marketing, branded SEO, non-branded SEO and comparison shopping engine advertising.
At Shop.org, ClearSaleing co-founder Adam Goldberg will delve into the results and findings from the initial quarterly publication of the Internet Retail AAI and what it means for marketers planning their holiday campaign budgets. Attendees can visit ClearSaleing at Booth # 346, September 21-23, at the Shop.Org conference, held at Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.
“The American Attribution Index will serve as a valuable benchmark for retail CMO’s and marketing executives. It will help them to make the most effective media selection and budget allocation decisions by revealing which media sources are exhibiting the most influence in the online retailing market,” says Goldberg.
Earlier this year, ClearSaleing announced the AAI and its intent to publish a series of indices focused on specific vertical markets. The initial publication of the Internet Retail index is the first in the series to be published quarterly by ClearSaleing and Vetra Analytics. Retailers attending Shop.org can become members of the AAI group at special charter rates. For more information click on http://www.attributionmanagement.com/americanattributionindex/
ClearSaleing Attribution Management Platform
The AAI is based on ClearSaleing’s attribution management platform technology which allows marketers to design and input their own attribution management model to fit their industry’s needs, precisely mapping the Purchase PathTM from a customer’s first action to their conversion and attributing a relative value to each marketing element along the way that contributed to that conversion.
About Vetra Analytics
Vetra Analytics is a marketing analytics consulting firm that specializes in analytics R&D, dashboards and customer data-based models. Created by Dr. Purush Papatla, Ph.D., the Vetra team brings years of global consulting and publishing experience to its clients. With this leadership,
Vetra has the ability to dig deep into your data repositories and locate key insights that can optimize your marketing decisions, enhance your customer satisfaction and increase ROI on marketing efforts. For more information, please visit www.VetraAnalytics.com.
About ClearSaleing
Named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES 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.
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.
ClearSaleing Announces Industry’s First Means of Using Attribution in Automated Bid Management at Search Engine Strategies Conference
SAN JOSE, CA Search Engine Strategies Conference, (PRWEB) August 11, 2009 — ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, today announced the availability of an automated bid management module that allows marketers to not only factor in profit measurement to keyword buying decisions, but also move past “last click” thinking to open up the funnel of keywords along a purchase path that previously would have been missed.
Built on top of ClearSaleing’s industry-leading attribution management platform, ClearSaleing’s automated bid management module lets marketers automatically control their keyword’s bids using profit metrics based on its attribution model. It also takes into account conversion latency – the period of time between the customer’s first visit and a conversion. ClearSaleing can track profit down to the SKU level, and profit rules set by the marketer can be as complex as needed.
“Most bid management solutions are optimizing bids based on imperfect or incorrect information,” explains Luke Tuttle, ClearSaleing’s Chief Information Officer. “What we have done is automate bid management using the most accurate data possible by taking into account profit, attribution, back end data feeds and conversion latency. Our bid management platform makes predictions about conversion latencies for each day of the year and factors those into the bid decisions to make the best bids possible with the information on hand,” he adds.
“We are giving marketers a way of capturing all those profit-potential keywords, including ones that do not have an immediate result but eventually lead to a purchase,” says Tuttle. “ClearSaleing captures all effective keywords in the funnel, not just the last click.”
All Clicks Count
ClearSaleing’s automated bid management is the only industry solution that fully incorporates attribution along the entire purchase path, not just the first or last click. These options allow marketers to expand keyword use to include those keywords at the ‘top of the funnel,’ to facilitate brand awareness as well as conversions. The solution employs ClearSaleing’s unique system of keywords, organized into three categories:
Introducers (First Click) – The first search term that results in a visit to your site. These terms generally are more generic and almost never result in an immediate purchase. Because these terms are more general, they are usually more expensive terms.
Influencers (All clicks in between the first and the last click) – Until ClearSaleing, these clicks were generally ‘invisible’ to bid management solutions. However they are extremely important since they are what continues to move a customer along a purchase path. These terms tend to be longer phrases, often including a combination of a version of the brand name teamed with a more general term
Closers (Last Click) – These are the terms that historically bid management systems (and analytics) see as getting ‘all of the credit for a sale’, which is incorrect. These terms are often times simply the branded terms.
“After reviewing the results of many automated keyword rules, we found that many solutions were simply ignoring important keywords or eliminating them if they had long latencies between a customer’s first visit and their purchase. Our research showed that more often than not, even extremely complicated, seemingly powerful rules resulted in bid changes for less than 1% of all keywords,” Tuttle explains.
Automated Bid Decisions
ClearSaleing offers bidding decision capabilities that differentiates the system from typical industry bid management rules. In addition to ClearSaleing’s unique capability to optimize on profit and true ROI, ClearSaleing also offers the capability to optimize on CPA or CPL if required by the business. It is flexible enough to allow a marketer to use the most appropriate optimization method.
“By using the measures unique to ClearSaleing, marketers can create rules that are based on business goals, ROI and profit. ClearSaleing’s attribution-based rules take into consideration not just marketing budgets but the actual costs of doing business,” says Tuttle.
About ClearSaleing 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’s technology enables attribution management through its patent-pending Purchase Path technology. Purchase Path accurately attributes profit (ROI) across the multiple marketing touch points that contribute to and influence a sale.
ClearSaleing is a thought leader in the growing scientific field of attribution management and founder of the Attribution Management Forum, the profession’s e-community for interactive marketers. The Company also publishes www.AttributionManagement.com, a website 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
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.
hase paths during the 1st quarter of 2009, shows that many types of media sources contribute to and influence a consumer’s purchase decision. Specifically, branded and non-branded SEO, branded and non-branded paid search ads, comparison shopping engines, email, display and affiliates all play an important role in influencing purchase decisions among retail customers.
