• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 4, 2008

How do you find the ROI in online campaigns when all the credit goes to the last click? Esco Strong, Group Manager for Market Research at Microsoft, wants you to remind you that the first online click is just as valuable as the last, "so why do we attribute the sale to the last?" Using the last click standard is flawed because you're loosing all the data that happened prior that led to the sale. Microsoft has been touting a process called "engagement mapping," which takes into consideration quantitative and qualitative data to weigh all the clicks through the sales process.

He said the industry is using a 10 years old technology, the same technology agencies used when people spent less time online than watching television, rather than watching television online. The promise of digital media is the quantitative and qualitative data together to manage touch points. How do you combine campaign performance data, competitive intelligence and customer research to give you a clear understanding of marketing effectiveness? For starters, take the data and use it.