Attribution Wars: In Defense Of Multi-click Attribution

In the online marketing community, the multi-click attribution model is gaining increased interest and use

. However, there is a contrarian bunch that believes, based on customer data it has collected and reviewed, that something on the order of 75% of conversions are accomplished with only one marketing touch and, more importantly, that only 4% of conversions have interaction with more than two channels. This leads our friends to discredit the importance of using a multi-click attribution model when determining appropriate reinvestment of marketing dollars.

Though our data show otherwise, we can recreate how an erroneous conclusion about the importance of multi-click attribution marketing could be drawn if we make certain assumptions about the flaws in the data of others.

For starters, it is impossible to make a fair assessment of referring events if one relies exclusively on cookies for tracking. Because of cookie expiration and deletion, the time over which it is possible to collect referrer data is severely limited, thus exaggerating the likelihood of only seeing one referring event prior to conversion; according to a 2007 comScore study, no fewer than 31% of U.S. computer users cleared their cookies in a month, either directly or through automated software. If we use Convertro tracking methods, which get around many of the shortcomings of cookies, we see a "one marketing touch" rate of 72% and a "more than two" rate of 13%, even before using the data to effectively redeploy marketing spend.

This leads to our second criticism of the model proposed by the contrarians: by failing to appropriately credit and therefore reinvest in top-of-the-funnel keywords, which tend to be clicked on far in advance of conversion, they create a self-perpetuating bias towards conversions that are generated primarily by a single marketing touch. In other words, reduced spending on todp-of-the-funnel keywords, due to reliance on flawed data, can cause marketers to fail to attract a set of customers that would otherwise have converted via multiple interactions. In our own experience, as clients leverage the data we collect to make their marketing decisions, not only do they see an increase in overall conversions, but also a shift towards conversions with more than one referring event (approximately double the rate described by the contrarians). Furthermore, the distribution of conversions with two or more marketing events becomes increasingly less concentrated towards the low end; for example, one of our clients now experiences 14% of its conversions from customers with two marketing interactions, as well as another 14% from those with three interactions, 6% from those with four interactions and so on.

Single marketing touch conversions are more common among companies whose brand names are likely to be searched directly; adjusting the data to eliminate these brand searches results in an increased proportion of multi-touch conversions. It is important to remember that many marketers in these strong-brand companies are already spending as much as possible on campaigns centered on their brands - in essence they have reached a point of saturation and cannot cast a wider net as they think there is nothing left for them to buy. By identifying top-of-the-funnel terms, multi-click attribution solutions such as Convertro enable marketers to expand their range of keyword purchases and draw more customers to their sites.

by: Jeffrey Zwelling

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