The document discusses attribution and optimization in online marketing. It summarizes that Efficient Frontier is a global performance marketing platform that manages over $1 billion in annual online marketing spend. It handles attribution across multiple channels using various models like last click, first click, and custom models. The document advocates that cross-channel optimization, which dynamically models interactions across channels and optimizes budgets, is needed to determine the most effective media mix and spending across channels like search, social, display, and offline channels to maximize ROI.

1. ATTRIBUTION AND
OPTIMISATION
Jonathan Beeston, Global Marketing Director

2. GLOBAL PRESENCE
The biggest global performance marketers choose the
Efficient Frontier platform
•$1 Billion in annual online marketing spend under management
•Working with 250 leading global marketers
•Over 150 million active keywords
•5 Million bids set, 100+ million models processed daily
•50+ Full-time engineers, 40 Master’s Degrees, 7 PhD’s
•1 Patent granted, 6 patents pending
@efrontier
blog.efrontier.com

3. REPRESENTATIVE OF GLOBAL CLIENTS
FINANCE TRAVEL RETAIL & AUTOS MEDIA AGENCY & OTHER

4. “All models are wrong.
Some are useful.”
George Box
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5. WHAT ARE USERS DOING ONLINE?
Date Type Channel Ad/Keyword
6/25/2010 16:52 Click Yahoo Search “london hotels”
6/25/2010 16:56 Lead - -
6/27/2010 13:42 Impression Doubleclick AdX Creative_disp_1.gif
6/27/2010 13:42 Impression Doubleclick AdX Creative_disp_1.gif
6/27/2010 13:47 Impression Rightmedia Creative_disp_1.gif
6/27/2010 13:56 Impression Rightmedia Creative_disp_1.gif
7/1/2010 13:42 Click Facebook Creative_FB_1.gif
7/1/2010 15:30 Impression Doubleclick AdX Creative_disp_1.gif
7/2/2010 11:42 Impression Rightmedia Creative_disp_1.gif
7/2/2010 14:05 Click Google Adwords “hotel in london”
7/2/2010 15:05 Conversion
• On average there are 4-6 touchpoints across before conversion

6. THE PROBLEM WITH LAST CLICK
£1,000
£2,000
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7. CROSS-CHANNEL OPTIMISATION

8. VALUE DISTRIBUTION ACROSS TOUCHPOINTS
Display Paid Paid Direct
Facebook Conversion
View Search Search Website
0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 1

9. EF EVENT ATTRIBUTION MODELS
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Last
First
Equal
Last
More
First
More
Custom

10. MULTI CHANNEL ATTRIBUTION: INSIGHTS
Channel Equal credit Last Click Bayesian Model
SEM 35% 25% 38%
SEO 25% 50% 22%
Facebook 10% 5% 12%
Display 30% 20% 28%
• Changing attribution changes your budget allocation
• Understand the impact before you make the change
• Doesn’t really explain interaction effects between
channels
• What about time between interactions?
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11. WHAT IS CROSS CHANNEL OPTIMISATION?
PROBLEM
• Determine the right way of spending across all media
channels, accounting for interaction effects across
channels to maximise my ROI.
SOLUTION
• Dynamically model all cross-channel interaction
effects and apply optimisation algorithms to determine
the correct media mix.

12. CROSS CHANNEL OPTIMISATION: THE VISION
Dynamically model €
Facebook
€ Biddable
Budget Display
Bids
Budget: €€€€€€
Multiple Goals:
€€
(1) Max Revenue SEM
(2) >10,000 Leads
€€€€
TV
Cross Channel
Modeling

13. CROSS CHANNEL OPTIMISATION: ONLINE
Total Marketing Budget: $12,000
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14. SEARCH + OFFLINE
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15. SEARCH + TV
Collect SEM and TV data
Determine Revenue
attribution for the multi-
point multi-channel funnel
Build TV Build SEM
Models models
Cross Channel Optimization
using portfolio theory
Cross-channel Efficient Frontier Objective:
Given an overall budget, find the best way to bid
across search and TV to get the maximum return
for the advertising dollar.

16. CROSS CHANNEL OPTIMISATION
• Our models show
that the optimal
budget allocation of
TV and SEM spend
in July would have
resulted in 5% lift.

17. PRESS + SEARCH
• Typically 6-7 weeks of improved search performance
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18. IN SUMMARY
• First pre-requisite: Unified Tracking Platform
• Attribution is a partial solution
• Attribution + Algorithmic Optimisation is the solution for
answering the media mix question
• This is a young field! There’s a long way to go!
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19. THANK YOU
Blog: blog.efrontier.com
Twitter: @efrontier; @searchbeest
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