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.