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Attribution Roadshow October 2011
1. The document discusses different methods of attribution in online advertising including search only, click to conversion, search and display in combination, and last view attribution. It notes the challenges with last view attribution. 2. It recommends using an attribution analysis framework, thorough campaign data collection, and tag management instrumentation to better understand attribution. 3. Dynamic regression attribution models that consider attribution as part of ongoing campaign optimization are presented as a better approach than last-view attribution.
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Attribution Roadshow October 2011
- 1. Understanding Attribution (<30mins) Doug Conely | Senior Director, Global Data & Targeting Andrew Newman | Senior Director, Global Insights 2011
- 2. Safe Organisation Environments Insights Integrated Technology Advanced Smart Supply Targeting Acquisition Creative Data Solutions Network
- 3. Safe Organisation Environments Insights Integrated Technology Advanced Smart Supply Targeting Acquisition Creative Data Solutions Network
- 4. Safe Organisation Environments Insights Integrated Technology Advanced Smart Supply Targeting Acquisition Creative Data Solutions Network
- 5. Different ways toask “is my advertising working?” Attribution Audience Effectiveness Analytics Measures
- 6. Attribution Attribution Audience Effectiveness Analytics Measures “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” - John Wanamaker “How do I know I’m paying the right people and allocating the right media mix?” “If I ran a football team how do I decide to pay each player?”
- 7. The perils ofpoor attribution … and what you can do about it control and analysis… 1 Paying more than once for the same conversion 2 Encourages bad practice among display participants ? 3 Spend optimised to the “wrong” media partners
- 8. Search only attribution +1 Brand keyword click
- 9. Search only attribution +1 Brand keyword click 100% Illustrative 80% 60% Search 40% Display 20% 0% Last Last -1 Last -2 Last -3 Last -4 Last -5 Last -6 Last -7 exposure
- 10. Click to conversionmeasurement +1 Display ad click Conversion behaviours
- 11. Click to conversionmeasurement +1 Display ad click Click behaviours http://blog.tribalfusion.co.uk/?p=116
- 12. Search and displayin combination +1 Display ad Brand keyword impression click Display ad Display ad impression impression Brand keyword click +1 >1?
- 13. Search and displayin combination +1 Display ad Brand keyword impression click
- 14. Last view attribution +1 Site visit Display ad Display ad Display ad impression 1 impression 2 impression 3 http://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2010/11/24/spray-and-pray-baby-the-insider-view-on-the-dysfunctional-state-of-display/
- 15. Last view attribution +1 Site visit Display ad Display ad Display ad impression 1 impression 2 impression 3 Wimbledon 1998 FA Cup Barcelona 2011 European Cup
- 16. Last view attribution +1 Site visit Display ad Display ad Display ad impression 1 impression 2 impression 3
- 17. With attribution youare never done… +1 Display ad Generic product Display ad Brand keyword impression 1 keyword searches impression 2 searches
- 18. Remember that everyonehas a vested interest here… Move away from last ad view but still want a higher mix for online display Need to protect last click search business. Still >80% of revenues Convince you current tag management is not sufficient You’re duplicating payments so they can save you money and you need their models to improve ROI You need to switch to a Havas or Group M agency
- 19. The perils ofpoor attribution … and what you can do about it control and analysis… 1 Paying more than once for the same conversion 1 Attribution analysis framework 2 Encourages bad practice 2 Campaign data collection among display participants 3 Tag management instrumentation 3 Spend optimised to the “wrong” media partners
- 20. 1 Attribution analysis framework |Even attribution weighting Attribution weighting 20% 40% Originator Converter Assist 40% > This is a great starting place but not the end goal Source: http://c3metrics.com/white-paper/
- 21. 2 Campaign data collection Social Media SEM/ SEO Display Affiliates Email
- 22. 3 Tag management instrumentation
- 23. TF approach: dynamicregression attribution models Attribution in the Campaign Attribution Campaign typical campaign lifecycle Delivery Analysis Planning Attribution as part of campaign Campaign optimisation Delivery
- 24. The perils ofpoor attribution … and what you can do about it control and analysis… 1 Paying more than once for the same conversion 1 Attribution analysis framework 2 Encourages bad practice 2 Campaign data collection among display participants 3 Tag management instrumentation 3 Spend optimised to the “wrong” media partners
- 25. Further reading • http://blog.comscore.com/2010/12/rid_meddlesome_click.html •http://c3metrics.com/white-paper/ • http://www.atlassolutions.com/uploadedFiles/Atlas/Atlas_Institute/Published_Content/dmi-TheLongRoadtoConversion.pdf • http://www.iab.net/media/file/IAB_WHITE_PAPER_FINAL_AUGUST-3-2010.pdf • http://www.havasdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/HD_Insight_AttributionDM.pdf • http://www.ensighten.com/whitepapers • http://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2010/11/24/spray-and-pray-baby-the-insider-view-on-the-dysfunctional-state-of-display/ • http://blog.tribalfusion.co.uk/?p=116 • http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=152611 • http://www.clearsaleing.com/archives/2011/06/14/clearsaleing%E2%80%99s-altitude-exposes-a-36-percent-flaw-in-last- %C2%ADad-attribution/ • http://www.omniture.com/offer/953?cms_site_lang=1&s_rtid=37079&&s_iid=31017&ct=email&cp=customer%20retention • http://www.tagman.com/index.php/forrester-white-paper
- 26. Safe Organisation Environments Insights Integrated Technology Advanced Smart Supply Targeting Acquisition Creative Data Solutions Network www.adnetworkv4.com
Editor's Notes
- #3 Last year we talked about Ad Network V4 and the notion that successful networks would have to adopt this model to respond to the changing environment. We introduced the new business models and our views on them.
- #4 With all the buzz around audience buying, later in the year we talked about the data assets and advanced targeting capabilities that good networks need to offer within the Ad Network v4 concept
- #5 Now we want to focus on today’s hot topic, attribution, and why that matters to you. We’ve deliberately put attribution at the centre of the ad network v4 wheel because improving attribution throughout the industry has huge potential to improve client results and shift further spending from other media.
- #6 Where does attribution fit in?For TF it is one of several separate but related issues within marketing analytics to answer the question: “is my advertising working”. You can look at this as effectiveness measures, audience analytics and attribution. When we talk about attribution we really mean just this piece.When we read around this subject we find that people can often confuse these issues, which just makes it harder to think through clearly.Effectiveness Measures: How you decide if a campaign is working or not and how you compare media ownersAudience Analytics: What audiences are most likely to meet your client’s marketing objectives
- #7 So what is attribution?The standard quote everyone gives for marketing is from John Wanamker, a pioneer of the department store model.For today’s multi-channel - but far more measureable world - we could restate this as question around “is my advertising working” as “How do I know I’m paying the right people and allocating the right media mix?””OR“If I owned a football team, how do I decide how much to pay each player?”
- #10 We’re going to walk through various attribution scenarios to examine the potential issues and build up a picture of how to think about attribution. Then we’ll look at what you can do about it today.
- #11 Here’s an illustrative example of why this matters.If you have a shopping basket and you need to award your media partners for driving conversions to that shopping basket then you need to know how much to pay them.If you just have one search partner on the entire plan – one player on the team - and an organic or paid search click results in a conversion then you pay “1” to the search partner.Life would be simple. For many small business who use only SEM this is the case, though don’t ask how they know whether the ad in the local paper is working or not
- #12 However, it turns out that as much as 75% of the last exposures to an ad before a conversion are search terms while display ads are more dominant in earlier stages of the funnel. Every team has more than one player.
- #13 If, instead, you had only a ppc or click to conversion partner on the media plan your attribution model would be in danger of not only paying one player in your team but possibly paying for goals that hadn’t even crossed the line, or if it was possible, crossed the wrong line.Look at the conversion behaviours for this UK business banking client. In this example, the converting behaviours are predominantly executive careers and executive cars. This is the profile of a small business owner.
- #14 Now compare the behaviours that convert to those that click. This is a classic “clicker” profile. Click to conversion measurement is forcing the media owner to look for conversions amongst a pool of users that looks very different to the target profiles, particularly in this example.This is measurement issue where audience analytics shows that you’re measuring the wrong thing. Therefore skewing attribution.
- #15 So what if there was a display ad impression in the campaign before the search? The search term would still get the post click attribution but the display ad might get the last view attribution too if your instrumentation is not set up right. Meaning that you’re paying twice for the same conversion. This is like paying your strikers a goal bonus but then paying both strikers for the same goal rather than just the one that actually scored. Tagman and Clearsaleing, amongst others, have done studies to show that this is a real risk. However, within a buying strategy most ad servers do a good job of deduplicating conversions, i.e. Within DFA there are reports to strip out and allocate conversions to the “last view”. You don’t pay twice per channel.Conversely, this might result in not attributing anything at all to one of the participants on the plan. Over time, the implication is that you might end up optimising someone out of the plan through poor attribution.
- #16 But we know that’s a bad idea because there have been plenty of studies to show that search and display work better together from an overall effectiveness perspective than separately. In this case, without good attribution, it’s like dropping your wingers because they’re not scoring goals but not noticing that they were helping to create goals.
- #17 What if you are using last view attribution? i.e. the media partner showing the last ad before the user converts gets the full display ad conversion attribution. This is the prevalent model today for display and while we think it is the “least worst” option versus click through rate measurement and click to conversion attribution it does lead to bad practice. In our example here, a user has already visited the site. Now all the media partners in the plan with a retargeting pixel on the site are incentivised to show as many ads as possible to the use on the cheapest inventory they can find whether that ad was visible on the page or not. The infamous “spray and pray technique.This happens even though we often know the timelag between a visit and a conversion event. Which should tell you to dial down post-visit impressions after a certain time lapse and try to bring people to the site for that investigative visit.
- #18 Last view attribution is like encouraging everyone to goal hang and hope someone else humps into the box for them to bang it in. It’s not wrong – after all “people do what you measure not what you expect” - but it’s not pretty and it doesn’t encourage best practice. Think Wimbledon 1988 versus Barcelona 2011.
- #19 No good reason for this slide...
- #20 What if it’s a lot more complicate than that with multiple ad impressions, generic product keyword search terms and brand keyword searches terms? What if there are rich media interactions, social interactions, affiliates and emails?In this case there is a major challenge in tracking the interactions on all the events, storing them and sorting them.Looking across the full spectrum of marketing activity, what do you do if the plans has offline components to the plan like tv, radio and outdoor?The point is, with attribution, you are never done.
- #22 The first thing you need to do is to decide the framework you want to try and apply. This determines the tagging infrastructure you chose and how you collect and process information.
- #23 This is an example of a methodology sometimes called even attribution. Originator: First source, makes the introductionConverter: Last source before the transactionAssist: 2nd to last source before the transactionThis is something you can implement immediately. You can run your in-house analytics to determine this, and we know that many digital agencies do this. And you can set up to award conversions in this way (you already deduplicate conversions on a last view basis)One thing you need to know though is what your cost per acquisition should be: that’s a whole other conversation.
- #24 The second thing you need is a data collection strategy and data warehousing infrastructure.For data collection you need to in a position to collect data on as many touch points for your client as possible.For data warehousing it used to be that you couldn’t buy anything off the shelf. That’s not quite true any more and companies like Netezza and Greenplum can help now. Integration, though, as always, is challenging. However, they approach this as an IT systems and infrastructure problem to solve, which is why they were bought by IBM and EMC respectively. We think the market is moving too fast and expectations too customised to solve by throwing hardware at the problem. We also think they will struggle to stay flexible enough.We’ve seen attribution reporting based on internal infrastructure from Artemis via Havas and from ZAP via the Mig. I’m sure there are others. Agencies are making good progress here but, as ever, the question is whether they can maintain the in house tech investment required
- #25 The final thing you can do about attribution is to make sure you have the right tag management infrastructure across your client sties. This isn’t always your choice, the client will often select the vendor, but we find that tag addition and removal is a key barrier to effective campaign management, timely audience analytics and even attribution itself.Add, edit or remove ANY online marketing tag/pixel instantly, direct from the web page and without changing the code of the siteLoad all page tags/pixels only when they are needed and not compromising page download speedsSee all the online marketing events – search, display, email, affiliates, social media - that appear in a customer's path to conversion, in order, in detail and in real-timeAward credit and commission across all online channels based on every channel's real role in the path to conversion and according to flexible attribution modelsThere are a number of new players in this space that can provide this along with the traditional vendors of container tags like DFA and Atlas
- #26 The problem with even attribution models is that they tend to be static, take a long time to complete the original studies and then come back to the planning team in a format that may be difficult to interpret. They tell you what would have happened under constant conditions for different payouts. This is descriptive but not predictive.What Tribal Fusion is interested in is being predictive. We want to optimise campaigns based on live attribution inputs. Dynamic regression attribution models need you to collect all the campaign data then run regression models in real-time to understand which events are more predictive of driving conversions than others. As enough data is gathered those weightings will change over time as the campaign evolves and various components are added to or removed from the plan. From a TF perspective this is what we want to get to. We would love the conversion feed so we could work out which audiences are more or less likely to convert and the real-time attribution weighting feed so that we could add those variables to our optimisation. Limit the scope to what we can measure. i.e. If we know that last view ads are not being attributed a high score and we know that an impression is more likely to be a last ad (from time to convert analysis) then we can downweight the scoring for that impression and award it to another campaign. Equally, if we know that early session impressions are being awarded then we can optimise to find users early in the day with first impressions that we see on them.We have a research paper on this that we’re happy to share with your technical teams. Our first step is to develop this on our network so that we’re sure we are doing the right things. When we get there the idea is to be able to provide this as a solution for our clients.