• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 15, 2010

Marketers often report the same conversion multiple times. While many continue to chitchat about the importance of attribution, few actually implement cross-channel analysis. SearchIgnite attributes the delay to a lack of education and technologies to support advanced strategies. So, the company released a white paper Tuesday in hopes of prodding marketers thinking about moving to this strategy.

The white paper details how proper media attribution in five steps allowed Center Parcs, a U.K. travel marketer, to increase return on investments (ROIs) by 54%. Center Parcs' digital agency Golley Slater supported the campaign. The challenge to understand the contribution from each channel across an entire click path, with a focus on generic keywords that assist a conversion, led the companies to partner with SearchIgnite.

Roger Barnette, chief executive officer at SearchIgnite, says the first four steps in the process focus on service such as strategic analysis, understanding the needs, and analyzing scenarios to discover the best attribution model before throwing the raw data into a technology platform to find new attribution scenarios.

Two issues continue to cause a lag in adoption for attribution management, Barnette says. The first reflects a cultural change. Some don't want to spend the time to wrap their minds around the process. It's just too difficult for many to follow the entire click process on their own without technology. Second, few technology platforms can attribute across all media forms to explore multiple clicks, and then put that optimization to work.

The ability to make that cultural change let Mark Fagan, digital media director at Golley Slater, determine how much to spend for each media channel. The company not only achieved better than average ROI, but 43% increase in overall revenue, 28% increase in bookings, and 14% decrease in CPCs.

The initial analysis, which took about 60 days, provides the most interesting stats in the 90-day test following the attribution changes. About 64.6% of paths have more than one click or exposure and more than 50% of Center Parcs's customers were interacting on more than one media channel before converting. The average number of exposures before conversion was 3.4 across all channels, according to the white paper.

This meant 42% clicked on a PPC ad and booked with no other channel involved, 51.2% clicked on organic search then a PPC ad and made a booking, 4.8% viewed a display ad then clicked on a PPC ad and made a booking, and 0.4% clicked on a display ad then a PPC ad and made a booking.

By analyzing the number of touch points in the campaign and understanding the interaction between channels, Center Parcs began to define and prioritize channel buys and distribution. SearchIgnite's technology, known in the white paper as "proprietary portfolio optimization technology (SPOT)," gave the digital media agency handling the account the ability to automate processes and insights into how credit gets distributed and applied.

SearchIgnite explains that SPOT's prediction and optimization engine driven by nonlinear statistical modeling and other advanced mathematics can locate optimal bids for each keyword across multiple channels.

And although case studies similar to this one often seem self-serving to the company providing the service, perhaps marketers can glean one point that allows them to gain better ROI on their campaigns. Which makes one wonder if technology will make agencies obsolete for some services down the road. I'm not suggesting it makes the partnerships between technology companies and agencies obsolete. I'm suggesting the strategic analyses will come from the technology platforms that execute daily activities.