Commentary

Marketers Still Don't Get Attribution

Road-Crossing-Shutterstock-AAttribution modeling -- assigning credit to specific channels -- will become increasingly important as more devices come online, but many search experts agree with Sara Jablon Moked, product marketing manager at Google Analytics, that nearly half of marketers don't do it.

During a webinar Thursday Moked detailed three forms of measurement that search marketers should follow -- namely holistic, full credit, and active. She suggests building a measurement plan that looks at all business objectives, defines strategy and tactics or techniques, identifies key stakeholders that can authorize changes or sign off on the project, categorizes channels and segments, and sets holistic key performance indicators.

Too many marketers are stuck in the last-click mentality, but one of the biggest challenges in the switch will become structural. Breaking down the silos that separate paid search from search engine optimization, or mobile tracking from laptop and PC, can be daunting. While it remains unclear how important all types of non-PC device traffic will become, marketers should know that the growth rate for TVs will rise 24%; tablets, 104%; smartphones, 79%; and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules, 82% between 2012 and 2017. In 2012, for example, 26% of Internet traffic originated with non-PC devices, but by 2017 the non-PC share of Internet traffic will grow to 49%.

Purchase shortcuts are not always the most lucrative. It turns out that longer purchase paths correlate with higher purchase values, Moked said.

Focus on active measurement techniques. Don't collect data for the sake of collecting data, but rather do it to make the bits and bytes more productive or because it will help folks in the marketing and the product development departments to better understand existing and potential customers.

Webinars like this one typically aim to highlight Google tools, but the company is not the only one improving on its attribution tools. IgnitionOne this week said it made enhancements to its real-time data visualization tool LiveMarketer, which shows individual user-level scores within the purchase funnel on a marketer's site.

It shows more than 15 statistics in the interface like engagement score, product interest and propensity to convert, optimal conversion threshold, geolocation, online historical journey, media exposures, cross-channel attribution path, session metrics, conversion details, and site category popularity. The update aims to increase user engagement details and an enhanced user experience.

"Road Crossing" photo from Shutterstock.

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