Campaign Attribution is Broken
So how do we maximise ROI on marketing spend?

Who am I?
 G’day, I’m Peter...
 I am Australian – with a strong aussie accent
 Founder of L3 Analytics
 Also Founder of MeasureCamp
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I intend to cover 4 areas*
1. Review visitor behaviour & touch points
 How campaign attribution treats them
2. My debate with campaign attribution fans
3. Always focus on the business questions
4. My recommended approaches**
* Using an extended version of Matthew Tod’s football (soccer)
analogy to make my points
** I don’t have a case study to prove these work ***
*** Yet...
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VISITOR BEHAVIOUR
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The Field of Play
RIO (location of the game)

Who gets the credit for a goal (conversion)?
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1. Last Click Attribution
Final touch
scores goal &
gets all credit
RIO (location of the game)

Who gets the credit for a goal (conversion)?
 The “Goal Scorer”
 Last click attribution
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2. First Click / Weighted Attribution Models
Midfield play
set up the goal
for the striker
Multiple players
contributed to the
goal & may deserve
some credit
RIO

Who gets the credit?
 The “Goal Scorer”
 Last click attribution
 Midfield passes
 First click / weighted attribution / descending
attribution / whatever allows you to pick the winner...
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3. Ad Tracking Models
Ad tracking
networks don’t
capture all online
touch points
RIO

Who gets the credit?
 The “Goal Scorer”
 Last click attribution
 Midfield passes
 First click / weighted attribution / descending
attribution / whatever allows you to pick the winner...
 Ignoring players
 An issue with traditional ad tracking tools
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4. Multiple Devices
Play started on
the other side of
the pitch & these
players deserve
credit too
Work (or smart Home (computer)
RIO
phone, tablet, etc)

Who gets the credit?
 The “Goal Scorer”
 Last click attribution
 Midfield passes
 First click / weighted attribution / descending
attribution / whatever allows you to pick the winner...
 Ignoring players
 An issue with traditional ad tracking tools
 Initiators of the passage of play
 You simply can’t ignore the issue of multiple devices
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5. Offline Touch Points
Ball forced out by
defender & other
players provided
alternative
attacking options –
also deserve credit
RIO

Who gets the credit?
 The “Goal Scorer”
 Last click attribution
 Midfield passes
 First click / weighted attribution / descending
attribution / whatever allows you to pick the winner...
 Ignoring players
 An issue with traditional ad tracking tools
 Initiators of the passage of play
 You simply can’t ignore the issue of multiple devices
 Defenders caused the error & ran in support
 Offline touch points can’t be captured in any tool,
however powerful (or big the data is)
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Let’s look at a scenario
Kevin Hillstrom (MineThatData) wrote this scenario &
asked – How should this purchase be attributed?
http://blog.minethatdata.com/2012/10/your-opinion-wanted-attribution.html
 Nine varied answers, most very precise
 Lets have a flick through
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THE DEBATE
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Defining the Debate
 Campaign attribution tools only capture a part of
the visitor journey
 All, half, most, a minority of the journey – it depends...
 If all visitors login, you will get more (multiple devices)
 But it is just not possible to get the full visitor
journey, however powerful (expensive) the tool is
or how big the data is
 Let’s clarify what I believe the debate should be
“Is the data being captured sufficient to provide the
intelligence for informed business decisions?”
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Current Majority Opinion
Invest in the right tools &
throw enough resources at
the problem – and it will
can be solved!!
Image from SmartInsights blog
This is Digital Analytics – we
work with the data we have Image from Adobe SiteCatalyst blog
In sporting terms
“Point to the
Scoreboard”
Quotes from Tagman case study
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My Viewpoint - No
 This is not a sampling size issue
 e.g. We don’t have 100% accuracy but we can use the
trends
 It is incomplete data
 Scale of the problem is unknown
 Data available can be misleading
 Risk of wrong decisions is too large
 Paul Postance: “it could be done better” is not an
insult. It’s a mindset to make things better.
 Change the conversation from which model is
most accurate to how to optimise spend
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BUSINESS QUESTIONS
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What do we really need to know?
 Do we really need campaign attribution models?
 No – they are simply the most obvious solution to the
business problem
 Let’s focus on the business problems, not the
technology
 There are three business intelligence requirements...
1. What do I report to the business?
2. How much do I pay agencies for the last period?
3. How do I optimise future marketing spend?
 Why hunt for a single solution – use the best
approach to answer each requirement
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A 4th Question – from the CEO
Did we win?
RIO ROI (only location they care about)

RECOMMENDED
APPROACHES
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Business Performance reporting
 Pick a single approach & stick to it
 I don’t care which (last click is simplest)
 What is important is that
 The business understands the approach
 A change in performance can be easily identified
 and reacted to!!
 Football analogy – who scored the goals
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Evaluate Agency Performance
 Define business objective for each campaign
 Is it awareness, research, conversion, etc
 Define what success looks like
 KPIs & targets
 Agree payment on this basis
 Football analogy – performance based payments
 Goals, tackles, minutes played, crosses, accurate
crosses
 Business
 Impressions, TVRs, visits, non bounce visits, visits that
create a basket, leads, sales, increase in NPS
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Don’t say this can’t be done...
 Not saying it would be easy
 But wouldn’t a campaign
equivalent of this be incredibly
useful/actionable?
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Optimise Marketing Spend
 Remind me – how do we optimise again?
 Objectives | Evaluation | Hypothesis | Test
 Football analogy – simultaneous games
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Optimise Marketing Spend
 Business equivalent – test campaigns
 How to test campaigns
 Different campaigns in different geographical regions
 Hold out tests
 Switch off/on keywords
 Pick similar trending products & promote half
 Measure impact from offline on online & vice versa
 Learn what impact of campaign really is
 Optimise spend using these learnings
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HAVE I CONVINCED
ANYONE???
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Summary
 Campaign attribution is broken
 Simply can’t capture all touch points
 Instead of wasting money on impossible, invest
resources in the difficult
 Focus on the real business intelligence
requirements
 Be consistent in internal reporting
 Evaluate performance against predefined
objectives & targets specific to campaign
 Test to discover what works best
 Adjust spend to maximise profitability
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THANK YOU
I can be found at
• peteroneill@l3analytics.com
• @peter_oneill
• +44 7843 617 347
• www.linkedin.com/in/peteroneill
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