Digital advertising has been known to provide marketers with tangible results, answers to their questions about ad campaign performance, and guidance on where to spend their money. However, marketers are now realising that the most measurable ad medium isn't quite as transparent as they might have assumed. As a result, pressure is building on brands as they shift their advertising spend to digital and rely more heavily on data as part of their media strategy. At the heart of this transition is attribution, the ability to evaluate the performance of each media channel. Attribution is becoming a hot topic as marketers look to attribution models for answers. This session will explore different models, places in which marketers should invest, and successful strategies.

1. Putting Your Money Where It Counts
Smart Attribution Modeling
Alex Porter
Location3 Media
President (speaker logo)
www.location3.com
New York | March 25–28
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2. New York| March 25–28, 2013 | #SESNY
“Attribution theory deals with how the social
perceiver uses information to arrive at causal
explanations for events. It examines what
information is gathered and how it is combined to
form a causal judgment” (Fiske & Taylor, 1991)
Attribution theory is concerned with how and why
ordinary people explain events as they do.
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Who gets credit?
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Types of Attribution
• Multi-Channel Attribution, Online to Store
• Multi-Channel Attribution, Across Multiple Screens
• Multi-Channel Attribution, Across Digital Channels
• Click Based Attribution
• Full Funnel Attribution
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Types of Attribution
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Types of Attribution
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Advice from Avinash
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Algorithmic Attribution
Algorithmic Weighting:
To remove the guesswork in attribution can use machine-learning and proven algorithms to
calculate probability-based weightings for assist impressions and clicks.
While it’s hard to say which approach is best, we have seen that most prefer transparency vs.
opacity, and known algorithms to proprietary models. If you’re going to put your neck on the line to
defend a new measurement standard, you should be comfortable with the approach and underlying
assumptions.
In general, a transparent, statistically validated approach is best.
Steve Lathem, Attribution 101
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9. New York| March 25–28, 2013 | #SESNY
How to get started:
• Build a Data Management Platform and Partner with a Tracking Vendor/Tag Management
• License/Partner with a Attribution Vendor
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Data Management Platform
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Attribution Vendors
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Barriers to Entry
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Dangers of Attribution
• “If we send someone a catalog and say,
‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and
they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s
going to make some people uncomfortable,”
Pole told me.
• “We are very conservative about compliance
with all privacy laws. But even if you’re
following the law, you can do things where
people get queasy.”
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Keys to Success
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Keys to Success
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Basic Case Study Beyond Last Click
• Sample of cities that generated over 1,000 bookings during the trial period
• Divided cities into two categories, one of which formed a control group
• Control group had its Google Adwords campaigns switched off for the 12 week test period
• Lastminute said the test showed the ‘last click wins’ rule does not give proper value to channels that
appear early in the conversion funnel (i.e. research, price comparison, etc)
• “The core results of the study revealed that for every individual conversion that was previously
attributed to Google AdWords, 1.43 conversions should have been attributed in this way.”
• “In other words turning off the non-branded search terms in Google Adwords will results in a 43%
larger decline than reported by Lastminute’s tracking systems.”
Source: http://www.travolution.co.uk/articles/2012/12/14/6289/lastminute-adjusts-google-adwords-approach-after-attribution-test.html
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17. New York| March 25–28, 2013 | #SESNY
People to Follow
Steve Latham - @stevelatham - CEO, Encore Media Metrics
• “There is a myth that everything in digital is infinitely measurable and explainable. Unfortunately this is not true; there is no perfect
solution. That said, there are many good solutions available, and the absence of a perfect solution is not an excuse for doing nothing.”
James Green - @JamesANGreen - CFO, Magnetic
• “Attribution is only as good as the mind of the marketer who creates the marketing plan…. The more sophisticated the technology, the
more reliant we are on truly smart individuals to plan, implement and interpret.”
Tom Pitts - @tom_pitts - Marketing Analytics Manager, AdRoll.com
• “I believe most marketers can find easier ways to optimize and refine their strategy by using simpler segmentation, analysis and
combining their web data with transaction data, before moving onto a more complex attribution model.”
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18. New York| March 25–28, 2013 | #SESNY
People to Follow
Yaakov Kimelfeld - Chief Research Officer, Kantar Media Compete
• “The most crucial omission of the current solutions, however, is their limited ability to answer the “why” questions…In order to
overcome this, attribution solutions should go hybrid, combining tagging/cookie pool data with the data from online behavioral panel.”
Avinash Kaushik, @avinash, Digital Marketing Evangelist, Google
• “The three-step “attract, acquire, retain” model is now broken into 37 different pieces. You are going to have to deal with the multi-
channel attribution problems, if you want your company to have an effective advertising and marketing strategy. Here’s the good news:
You don’t have to try to boil the ocean in one go.”
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19. New York| March 25–28, 2013 | #SESNY
GET TO THE CHOPPER!
• 44% of interactive marketers have no process in
place to assign credit - not even last click (IAB).
Don’t be in this group!
• Understand what you are trying to solve.
• Get your data in one place.
• Try out different models, play with the data.
• Utilize free multi-channel reports in Google.
• Run some tests, measure, run some more.
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20. New York| March 25–28, 2013 | #SESNY
Remember… it’s a marathon, not a sprint!
Things are getting interesting. The future of attribution is right around the corner.
The goal is not about who gets credit, but where best to spend your digital dollars for optimal
return on each of your marketing campaigns.
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