As you’re probably well aware, attribution is the subtext of almost every conversation you have with mobile marketers when you talk about ads. And sometimes even when you don’t
(“How’s it going?” “Who said that?”).
The bottom line is, everyone wants to know what works and why.
Since mobile doesn’t really lend itself to easily
traceable clicks or cookies, a number of ad-tech vendors have released new measurement tools in the past couple of months. Facebook has jumped on that train, opening up its Lift measurement tool as an
API for marketing partners and third parties to build on and conduct their own tests.
Lift measurement used to mean Facebook telling you when stuff was working and when it wasn’t using
various methods. Now you can see for yourself.
So far the platform is reportedly experimental, but even so, it’s an upgrade to Facebook’s ability to leverage its considerable
resources to find out exactly what effect your ad spend has on consumers. That’s a good thing for marketers.
Facebook’s Atlas also received an update allowing it to receive
point-of-sale data via upload and compare it alongside ads served.
Facebook is pushing deeper into offline attribution, a space that just about every mobile marketer is hoping to gain insight
into.
As location data improves, and more marketers start shifting money into mobile, I’m curious to see if these moves pay off -- and if offline attribution breaks out as a viable
metric at scale this year.