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.
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.
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.
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.
The Attribution Management Forum 2.0, which took place on January 29, 2009, was the second installment in the Forum series.
This is the first video in the 2.0 series and covers Paid Search and Lifetime Ad Value (LAV). The different Purchase Paths explored in this video include : search with a time element, product sold is unrelated to the ad, and lifetime ad value with related products. Please visit ClearSaleingInc on YouTube for the latest Attribution videos and events.
Join Range Online Media and ClearSaleing as we approach attribution modeling and cross-media management from the perspective of the brand marketer.Learn from real-life experiences of the triumphs and challenges of some of the world’s most recognizable brands.
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.
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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.
