Marketing Attribution is the process of determining how an online conversion event (such as a sale, or signup) was reached, by measuring the media touchpoints (potential points of interaction between a customer and an advert) that led to it.
It’s important to create an effective attribution model, as it allows a marketer to work out which channels (or touchpoints) are having the most influence on sales so that they can put greater investment into touchpoints that are most effective (or, try to understand why particular touchpoints are less effective and try and fix them).
What Is An Attribution Model?
An attribution model can be defined by the application of a defined set of rules to can measure a customer’s level of engagement on the path to conversion.
This was a fairly easy process to perform in the early days of marketing across linear channels (TV, print and radio). With Media Mixed Modelling (MMM) marketers were able to broadly understand what performed, and use this information plan for the future.
Then, with the growth of diverging and converging digital channels (display, social, search) in the last 25 years, we have seen a huge increase in potential touchpoints, an evolution of how people engage with brands, which has created new opportunities and challenges for marketers. With this, a new model for attribution emerged, Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), to model for a more complex digital landscape.
But in recent years, new restrictions in audience targeting and tracking driven in part by commercial interest, and in part by the introduction of tighter privacy laws, have severely limited MTA’s effectiveness.
For this reason, we recommend marketers consider a new ‘mixed measurement model’ that takes into account this new privacy-first media landscape – by looking at five key pillars.
Below Are The Five Key Pillars of Attribution Model
Media Mix Modelling:
A strong top-down approach that covers all channels. The best measure of incrementality across different channels – used for budget setting, scenario planning and optimisation.
Conversion Tracking:
Persistent and reliable customer identity, tracking conversions across channels. A more granular view than MMM can offer, to guide optimisation
Multi-Touch Attribution:
Provides real-time measurement, insight and campaign optimisation at all parts of the user-journey to sale
Incrementality and Split Testing:
An evolving test and learn framework to measure incrementality over time – allows marketers to fill the blind spots left by MMM, conversion tracking and MTA. Helps establish which creative works best, the impact of different landing page messages and more.
Brand Share of Search:
Used to ensure that brand-building marketing keeps pace with others in the category, to maintain a balance of longer-term and shorter-term goals, and a lens against which to assess ROI against performance data
For more detail on each of these five pillars, please download our Attribution Model Playbook.
We hope you enjoyed this article. We intimately understand the pain points of the modern marketer and have designed CvE to help solve your most complex challenges. Contact us to discover how we can help you upgrade your marketing sophistication.
