• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 20, 2023

Microsoft Advertising released a model into general availability that it calls “last-touch attribution for automated bidding” on the Microsoft Audience Network this week.

Daniel Godoy, evangelist at Microsoft Advertising, provided this update during a presentation. He said enabling the feature when using automated bidding can help advertisers gain a full picture to maximize their return on investment.  

“We know, sometimes, impressions play a powerful role in native and display advertising in influencing a consumer’s path to conversion,” said Daniel Godoy, evangelist at Microsoft Advertising. “Adopting last touch attribution will ensure that our automated bidding solutions take both click-based and view-through conversions into account when making decisions.”

The feature, Godoy said, ensures that Microsoft gives more data signals to advertisers to enhance automated bidding on the Microsoft Audience Network.

During the presentation, a marketer asked Godoy to clarify what Microsoft means by last-touch attribution. She said “it feels odd” that Microsoft is asking marketers to push into last-touch attribution when the industry has been pulling away from it. She also asked whether marketers use last-touch metric just for the Audience Network.

Last-touch attribution typically gives the lion's share of the weight to the last thing the consumer interacts with. The industry has been moving away from last-touch attribution for years.

The marketer asked Godoy to provide points to tell brands, because this is a very different model compared to what they are accustomed to using.

“We are not moving back to last-click [model,” he wrote in an email, “but instead moving away from it to help improve automated bidding."

“We are always trying to measure everything clickable and audience seeing the ad,” Godoy said. “This was in pilot and now it’s moving to general availability in the Microsoft Audience Networks markets.”