last click « Attribution Management

Getting Value Out of Google Search Funnels

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

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.

Tags: adam goldberg, advertising analytics, attribution, attribution management, clearsaleing, engagement mapping, google seach funnels, last click, purchase path
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Looking Beyond Last Click: An Agency’s Approach to Interactive Attribution

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Join ClearSaleing on Wednesday, June 30 at 1pm EST for the next webinar in the Attribution Management series titled: Looking Beyond Last Click: Rosetta’s Approach To Interactive Attribution.

Rosetta’s command of ClearSaleing’s attribution management technology has helped them improve client performance in many ways. Join us for this free webinar to discover more about:

- How different marketing tactics tend to come in at different points in the conversion funnel

- Why it is important to provide credit to the entire purchase path a user utilizes to convert

- How seeing Purchase Paths provides opportunities to see what channels are doing for themselves and others

- How understanding the complete picture for PPC upper funnel terms impacted accounts

- How attributed data has been a component in successfully driving down CPA

- How impression tracking proves the true value of display

Speakers during the webinar include Rosetta’s Analytics and Optimization Manager, Brean Bark, along with Search, Online and Social Media Manager, Aaron Smith. The discussion is moderated by ClearSaleing’s co-founder and CIO, Adam Goldberg.

Register now for this free webinar.

Tags: advertising analytics, agency, attribution management, interactive attribution, last click, purchase path, rosetta, Webcasts, webinar
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Understanding Attribution Part III: A Visual Blog

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

A Visual Blog

In previous posts, I’ve tried to explain the reasons behind the frustrating fact that some report data just won’t ever match. This week’s topic is a no-brainer. To best describe why reports created by pulling data from different data sources won’t match other reports, let’s see it visually.

So, why is this a problem? Say you haven’t configured your web analytics to track your PPC, or maybe an agency is managing your PPC, but you have not given them access to your web analytics, so you must rely on the data the search engines provide. Inevitably, someone in your organization is going to want a roll-up or an executive summary of all the engines. The result is then the creation of a report from disparate data sets.

The problem – each vendor report is not aware of the other vendors. So, in the example below, each vendor report will claim credit for the entire purchase and claim all of the revenue.

As you can see, this greatly overvalues the conversion and creates an unrealistic view of the performance.
If you do try to compare the compiled report to your web analytics, there will be a problem as to how web analytics will credit that sale, as you can see below.

The real need is to conceptually ‘divide up’ the order and revenue and give everything credit.

By thinking about dividing up credit, you more accurately value the contribution of each advertising source. With this accurate and comprehensive picture, you can really optimize your spending, ensuring that you focus your spend, time and attention on what truly is working. What you may then find clicks (and impressions) that occur at the very beginning of the ‘funnel’ are getting the credit they deserve, so you may be able to increase bids on your more general keywords or show true ROI on banner impressions.

Tags: advertising analytics, analytics, attribution management, data, last click, ppc, purchase path, reports, understanding attribution
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Understanding Attribution: All Reports Are Not Created Equally

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Attribution is a new concept to many marketers. And a natural reaction to seeing new information, especially information (or data) that is different, is to question the accuracy of the reports (data). The way that seems most logical to confirm that the new numbers are correct is to compare one report to another. In my last post I introduced this series of blogs hoping to alleviate frustration that many marketers experience when they try to compare two reports and the numbers don’t match.

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.

Tags: advertising analytics, attribution, attribution management, last click, purchase path, understanding attribution
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Attribution Myths & Misconceptions

Monday, May 10th, 2010

When something gains a lot of popularity, whether it is a new product, a celebrity, a political view, a new business process, etc., you have your supporters and detractors. Typically, the supporters only see things with rosy colored glasses, which could cause them to ignore any negatives, while detractors use a lot of half-truths or flat out lies to represent their point of view. Given that Attribution Management is amongst the hottest topics in the world of online marketing, it too has its share of supporters and detractors.

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:

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

Tags: adam goldberg, advertising analytics, attribution, attribution management, last click, Webcasts, webinar
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Understanding Attribution: 5 Reasons Why the Numbers Won’t Match

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Almost daily I field questions from marketers who are trying to compare two different reports. They are confused because the numbers don’t match.

There are many, many, many reasons why, when comparing two reports, even from the same system, the numbers will not match.

The reasons are (and each week, I will cover one reason in detail):

1. Attribution Reporting

Attribution reports’ calculations update daily and divide credit (orders, revenue and profit) over all of the contributing ads, impressions and clicks that led to a sale or other conversion. Attribution is a newer concept for many marketers. The fact that there is now the idea of a fraction of an order is definitely a different way of thinking.

2. Non-Attribution

Most marketers are very comfortable with non-attribution reporting. Common examples of non-attribution reports are reports that are used for operational decisions, for example a Daily Order Report from a shopping cart. Problems arise when trying to compare an attribution report to a non-attribution report (comparing apples to oranges).

3. Multiple Data Source – Over Counting/Over Crediting

If web analytics have not been configured to track all of the different sources of traffic to a conversion level, marketers are left to rely on reports provided by the source itself (e.g. Google AdWords Reports, Yahoo Search Marketing Reports, as well as other vendors like Display, Affiliates and Email). Because none of these sources are ‘aware’ of the other sources, conversions and revenue can be over counted, and therefore, over credited.

4. Under Counting – Under Crediting

This is a by-product of the limitations of last click. If you are using traditional web analytics, this is likely a problem. Because the referrer only pays attention to the last place where a visitor came from, you wind up under crediting certain sources.

5. Accuracy – Data Quality of Web Reports

Here is the big elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. It is possible that the data that you are relying to make important spending decisions is wrong. The number one cause, in my experience, is a problem with the implementation. Examples I have seen of implementation problems are code not being on every page, conversion code not being on the page or not being correct, and profiles or other settings that have not been configured properly. It is definitely worth auditing your implementation, even if you are using a free solution.

6. Bonus: One web vendor report to another

Even armed with the knowledge that both implementations are correct and complete, it is most often an exercise in futility comparing one vendor report to another. The reason for this: each company has a different idea of how metrics should be defined and calculated. And each company has settings both internal and external that define how metrics are calculated (e.g if someone is on your site for 60 minutes are they one visit or two).

This week – Attribution

Attribution is a difficult concept. Take pay-per-click as an example. In order to fairly and accurately measure an ad, you have to think about latency. On the day an ad runs, some of the conversions will take place. But some people will come to your Web site from the ad and not be quite ready to purchase. They may decide to return to your site a few days later and purchase.

To be ‘fair’ to your ads, you have to be able to count these conversions and credit them to the original ad (or multiple ads if several were seen along the way).

For example, say someone clicks on a Google ad on April 27^th. They get to your site but are not convinced to purchase. Instead they continue their research. The next day, April 28^th, they go to Yahoo, click on an ad and purchase.

If you are attributing credit, here is what your reports look like:

April 28, 2010 – Yesterday’s Report

Date	Source	Visits	Conversions	Ad Spend	Revenue
4/27/10	AdWords	100	4	$231.00	$512.00

Here’s the tricky thing – the numbers change. In order to give credit for latent conversions, the historic performance will then change.

April 29, 2010 – Custom Report Range 4/27/2010

Date	Source	Visits	Conversions	Ad Spend	Revenue
4/27/10	AdWords	100	4.5	$231.00	$655.00

There is no additional ad spend, but the .5 order is now credited to the correct day.

And this impacts all of the calculated metrics.

April 28, 2010 – Yesterday’s Report

Date	Source	Conv. Rate	Cost/Order	Rev/Order	Rev/Visit
4/27/10	AdWords	4%	$57.75	$128.00	$5.12

Here’s the tricky thing – the numbers change. In order to give credit for latent conversions, the historic performance will then change.

April 29, 2010 – Custom Report Range 4/27/2010

Date	Source	Conv. Rate	Cost/Order	Rev/Order	Rev/Visit
4/27/10	AdWords	4.5%	$51.33	$145.56	$6.55

And even a step further, this impacts the ROI for each day.

The best thing about solutions that provide attribution reporting is that they supply this information already pre-calculated, so you don’t have to think about these types of calculations or even consider the fact that there are now fractions of orders.

Tags: advertising analytics, attribution management, data sources, last click, purchase path, reporting, understanding attribution
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Attribution Management: Common Myths & Misconceptions

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Attribution management is shrouded in mystery to some online marketers. But it’s pretty straight forward, actually. In the simplest terms, just because somebody clicked on a paid ad and you made a sale, it doesn’t mean the PPC ad was responsible for it. How about if that same person had been engaging with your brand for some time via an email campaign, your organic listings, a social media site and then eventually decided to buy. There’s a whole lot of contact before the click and if you’re responsible for all of those touch points, you need to be able to appropriate your marketing dollars where they count most.

Join us for a free webinar when we discuss:

How to analyze your current attribution management status (or lack of it);
Are there any good tools available?
Which ads and sources should get credit?
Is path analysis a waste of time?
Will attribution pull dollars away from search?
And much more…

Register for the webinar which takes place Wednesday, May 12 at 1pm.

Tags: adam goldberg, advertising analytics, attribution manageme, attribution management, brand, clearsaleing, display, last click, paid seach, web analytics, webcast, webinar
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DM News: Attribution management- Impacting the Bottom Line

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

View the entire article

Attribution management is a practice that is starting to get more attention from online marketers, fueled partly by the pressures they are under to make smart decisions on online ad spending.

Attribution is a method of determining which of your online ads lead a customer toward a purchase decision, and pinpointing the level of influence of each of these ads. Traditional web analytics has been helpful in determining which sites are “sticky,” and which sites draw qualified traffic, but attribution goes a step further… continue reading on DM news site

Tags: adam goldberg, advertising analytics, analytics, attribution management, conversion, direct marketing, dm news, even attribution, last click, opertational attribution
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The Attribution Opportunity – Widening the Top of the Funnel

Friday, January 15th, 2010

By Joy Brazelle, Director, Product Marketing and Professional Services

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.

Tags: accurate, attribution, attribution management, clearsaleing, last click, media plans, top of the funnel, web analytics
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Forrester-ClearSaleing Webinar Examined the ROI Benefits of Emerging Science

Monday, December 7th, 2009

By Amy Hooker, Maven Communications

During a fascinating and insightful hour-long webinar December 1, account managers, brand managers and search marketers from advertisers and agencies listened to Forrester Research analyst Emily Riley and ClearSaleing co-founder Adam Goldberg explain why attribution management is a discipline that should be applied to marketing spend at all budget levels.

Webinar participants learned that attribution is the practice of distributing credit for an action or conversion across multiple ads rather than assigning full credit to the most recent ad. ClearSaleing’s Adam Goldberg is an evangelist for eliminating ‘last click’ thinking, and moving marketers toward the concept of using attribution modeling to give proper credit to all touchpoints that contribute to a conversion.

Searching for Accuracy

The webinar also focused on the role of search in attributing credit for conversions. Typically a consumer can conduct several searches before moving toward a purchase. Paid search is a very effective closing vehicle, but often, it is not where a customer’s Purchase Path begins, said Goldberg. Search often gets overvalued because shopping engines, email campaigns, social media and other touchpoints are not measured along the Purchase Path, Goldberg explained.

Attribution Modeling

Advertisers and agencies have options on what type of attribution they choose to employ. First click attribution is useful for determining which touchpoint created momentum toward a conversion. Equal credit attribution assigns the same value to each touchpoint. Algorithmic attribution is a higher investment but the most accurate because each touchpoint gets the most accurate credit.

ClearSaleing’s model is based on algorithmic attribution, which employs a sample size large enough to be statistically relevant. ClearSaleing and its partner, Vetra Analytics, analyze hundreds of thousands of touchpoints along a Purchase Path. These touchpoints include organic and paid search, shopping engines, email response and social media sites – all points along a Purchase Path that contribute to a conversion. With this data, ClearSaleing is able to assign a weight to each touchpoint that is a realistic predictor of influence.

Why Attribution?

Attribution moves marketers further away from ‘last click’ thinking, which does not represent an accurate picture of how consumers act or buy. By applying attribution, marketers can see what ads are working to bring in ROI and eliminate those that are not working, making the necessary adjustments to their marketing spend.

The best practice is to recalibrate your marketing mix based on seasonality and other key factors relating to your particular business, said Goldberg, who noted that ClearSaleing often works with clients quarterly to calibrate the effectiveness of their marketing spend.

Regardless of the level of marketing spend, the webinar presented a clear case on why attribution can help all advertisers and agencies not spend more, but spend smarter.

During the webinar Riley referred to her Q4 2009 Forrester Wave Report on Interactive Attribution, in which ClearSaleing was named as a leader. For more information visit www.ClearSaleing.com

Tags: adam goldberg, attribution management, attribution modeling, forrester, forrestser wave, interactive attribution, last click, webinar
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