Many PPC and SEO professionals spend their days justifying their work by using tracking information that is, at best, misleading and, at worst, completely wrong. In this session, Bart Burggraaf, Partner at MediaGroup Worldwide, discusses the pitfalls of digital marketing tracking, how we got into this mess and what to do about it (hint: it involves statistical analysis!). Three key takeaways: 1. Understanding what the tracking data REALLY tells you. 2. Understanding how we got to the point that we are tracking all the wrong things. 3. Understanding how to get reliable, accurate data that measures actual incremental business.

1. MASTER
CLASS
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS ~ SEPTEMBER 14 - 15, 2023
DIGIMARCONEUROPE.COM | #DigiMarConEurope
DIGIMARCONNETHERLANDS.NL | #DigiMarConNetherlands
Data-Driven
Marketing
Master Class
Bart Burggraaf
AGENCY PARTNER
MEDIAGROUP WORLDWIDE

2. Your obsession with
tracking is wrong
Presentation for DigiMarCon
Europe 2023, by Bart Burggraaf

3. Today’s Agenda
• Introduction
• The digital house that advertising
built
• How did we get here?
• Our current situation
• What do we do now?

4. Introduction

5. MediaGroup operates globally and currently has offices in Denmark,
Poland and Hong Kong. You can also find our business
representatives in Switzerland, the UK and the Netherlands.
Delivering value and measurable results. Globally.

6. We help our clients grow with SEO, paid
advertising, strategic consulting and measurement
services.
4+
locations
20
operational
languages
60+
specialists
35+
active clients

7. Bart Burggraaf
Partner, NL
Bart is a Partner and owner at
MediaGroup. In the agency, he
primarily works on SEO, client
strategy, new business and staffing.
Meet the speaker

8. The digital house that
advertising built

10. The digital house that advertising built.
For consumers:
• Narrative instead of choice
• Bad media, click bait, outrage
culture
• Addictive behaviors
• Erosion of privacy due to hoarding
of data
For marketers:
• Pay for Play & Black Boxes
• Too little focus on brand building
• Data paralysis
• The interpretation of results based
on bad incentives
• Fraud and robots

11. How did we get here?

12. A story about incentives.
• Online Advertising was bought based on
impressions.
• The quality of those impressions did not
matter.
• The incentive was to get as many eyeballs
as possible.

13. • Marketers measured ad clicks to judge
responses.
• Ads aimed for clicks above all else.
• Large, confusing and irrelevant ads came.
Click here!!!

14. Nice to see you again.
• Marketers saw clicks as insufficient and shifted
focus to audiences.
• Initially, we did that through media titles.
• The incentive drove publishers to decouple
content from audiences.
• Targeting using data was born.

15. Checkout is over here.
• Marketers shifted to tracking conversions.
• Ads were targeted at those ready to
convert.
• Search ads and retargeting thrive on this
principle.
• But would a large portion of those
conversions have happened anyway?

16. • For a lead who saw a print ad, clicked a
banner, searched, and converted, which
channel gets credit?
• Channels vie to claim credit.
• Advertisers favor the last touch channel, as
it’s easier to explain to your boss.
• Results lagged for larger firms.
You get credit! You get credit!
Everyone gets credit!

17. Data is the new gold.
• Marketers focused on attribution.
• Measurement vendors implemented models
to untangle each channel's contribution.
• Some marketers employed these models to
justify 'awareness' spending.
• This demanded a lot of data, driving a digital
data gold rush.

18. Our current situation

19. Social Media: Rent a Friend
• From building communities to pay for play
only.
• Walled gardens; no transparency.
• No ‘medium is the message’ effect.
• Less and less diversity of opinions.
• Toxic social effects of social media.
• It works, and is where the audiences are.

20. Search Engines: Smile & Pay
• Paid is moving towards a black box approach.
• Inflation of PPC costs, lowering of ROI.
• PPC is moving from purely commercial intent to
informational intent.
• SEO shifted: from site quantity metrics to site
quality, now to audience attention.
• Paid lacks brand impact.
• Less information choice for consumers.

21. Publishers: pretty shady too
• Click bait. Outrage. Quantity over quality.
• Nearly all are buying clicks.
• Significant pure-play fraud, even higher for
near-fraud like invisible ads.
• AI will further skyrocket the industry.
• The industry are content farms with a large
robot audience.

22. And.. who likes
tracking anymore?
Google, Microsoft, Meta,
Amazon & Apple (yes).
Other stakeholders, not so much.

23. Other
stakeholders, not
so much.
• Marketers are confused.
• Publishers are burned out.
• Audiences don’t know who to
trust.
• Regulators had to make *some*
progress on legislation.

24. What do we do now?

25. How did we used to do
advertising?
• Advertising used to be slower.
• We planned advertising based on media
titles that had certain audiences.
• Aligned incentives: quality media draws
clear segments.
• Marketers trusted media buys, consumers
trusted publishers, and publishers trusted
income.
• We looked at results with statistics.

26. Quality. Trust.
Statistics.
Going back to the
‘good old days’?

27. advertising increases/maintains sales & margins
How advertising works
increasing chance that people will choose your brand
creating positive feelings and associations
making the brand easy to think of and easy to buy
broad reach ads that people find relevant & enjoyable
targeted activation that they find relevant and useful
BY
Source: adam&eve DDB
BY
AND
VIA
AND

28. Customer journeys are not linear.
HOW MARKETERS THINK
VIEW A LANDING PAGE
VIEW PRICING
SIGNUP
$$$

29. Customer journeys are not linear.
HOW CUSTOMERS THINK
VIEW A LANDING PAGE
VIEW
PRICING
SIGNU
P
$$$

30. Your data does not say what you think it
does.
WHAT YOUR CHANNEL REPORT SAYS
How do you make decisions based on this data?
Channel Spend Conversions CPA
PPC $150,000.00 1899 $75.00
Social ads $225,000.00 4091 $55.00
SEO $75,000.00 3000 $25.00
RTB $80,000.00 1333 $60.00
Display $120,000.00 2400 $50.00
Total $650,000.00 12723 $51.09

31. Your data does not say what you think it
does.
WHAT YOUR CRM SAYS
How do you make decisions based on this data?
Channel Conversions
Direct 4222
Unknown 2010
SEO 3223
PPC 750
Display 150
Total 10355

32. Your data does not say what you think it
does.
WHAT YOUR ATTRIBUTION SAYS
How do you make decisions based on this data?
Channel Spend Last touch Assisted
PPC $150,000.00 1483 3016
Social ads $225,000.00 495 2847
SEO $75,000.00 2754 188
RTB $80,000.00 143 1742
Display $120,000.00 997 2000
Total $650,000.00 5872 9793

33. Your data is too short term.
Source: “Profit Ability: the business
case for advertising”, Nov 2017

34. Your ads are not creative enough.

35. Your ads are not creative enough.

36. You probably don’t spend enough on brand
building.

37. The Future is MORE than tracking
• We use tracking data for directional, day to day operations
if/when appropriate.
• Attribution modelling can be useful for larger companies in
medium term adjustments.
• We move to a black box model of measurement for long
term strategic purposes.

38. But also:
• We plan advertising based on titles/channels/content with quality
audiences.
• We respect audiences and advertise with good creative design.
• We also use advertising to build brand (awareness), not just grab
conversions.
• Humans over Robots.

39. The Future is MORE than tracking
Channel
tracking
Attribution
Marketing Mix
Modelling
Strategic Value
High
Low

40. Statistical analysis
• We look at incremental business brought by
advertising.
• A simple way is to test turning off certain
campaigns, channels, tactics and seeing the
effect on business.
• By comparing business loss with investment
cuts, you gauge true returns.
The advertising black box
Business $ out
Media $ in

41. • We can also look at the correlation between
input ($) and output ($).
• Simply put, how does ad spending translate
to business outcomes?
• Remember there are long term effects, as
well as macro/trend/seasonal and many
many more possible influences to data.
The advertising black box
Business $ out
Media $ in
Statistical analysis

42. MediaGroupWW.com
Bart Burggraaf
bart@mediagroupww.com
We’d love to
hear from you.