The State of Marketing Attribution

Shane Murphy

@adroll

@shanemurfy

Agenda

1 Attribution the theory

2 State of Marketing Attribution Report Highlights

3 The Case for Incrementality

4 How to get started

About AdRoll

35k Customers of all sizes globally

10+ Years of growing online businesses

True Business Impact Made Easy

Online - Action Offline - Desire

When the internet started life was easy

● See athlete wearing shoes

● See tv ad for shoes

● Try shoes on in store

● Search for shoes online

● Click on ad

● Purchase shoes

Online - ActionOnline - Desire

● See ad with celebrity wearing shoes on

instagram

● See friend bought shoes on Facebook

● Go to nike.com and check sizes

● See retargeting ad for shoes

● Search for Nike.com

● Click on branded search ad

● Complete purchase

Now it’s far more complex

We started with rules rules rules

Last Click - everyone’s first model

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror image

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equally

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyPositional - location, location, location

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyTime Decay - short term memory

80%+ of Marketers use a Rule based Model

50%+ use a click based model

But it’s not that simple

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyLack of correlation between clicks and conversion

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyLack of correlation between clicks and conversion

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyLast Click models pull investment from upper funnel demand generating channels

AdRoll internal campaign data

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyAnd ignore the multiple other steps that help drive a conversion

AdRoll internal campaign data

% Revenue driven with conversion path +1 step

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyAnd to make it worse

The top quartile of clickers are5.5x more expensive than less

clicky users

“In order to get more click conversions, you need

to drive more clicks. In order to drive more clicks,

you may be optimizing away from some of the

highest converting inventory in the campaign.”

- James Moore - CRO simpli.fi

“Rule based or last/first touch approaches are remedial approaches that falsely boost campaign and channel performance and do a poor job of measuring cross-channel impact”

- Forrester

We can not truly help our customers unless we both

think differently about attribution

Key FindingsState of Marketing Attribution

N=987 respondents: 74% in house marketers, 26% agencies

Regions covered: North America, Europe, Japan and Australia

www.adroll.com/dmexco2017

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyAbout the research

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyLess than half European marketers run on all campaigns

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyClick based models still most used

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyTechnology, data structure, knowledge and time are key barriers to adoption

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyMost people think First and Last Click models are effective

Last Click - everyone’s first modelFirst Click - the mirror imageLinear - touchpoints matter equallyOver 50% of marketers use Google for their Attribution modelling...

Marketers are waking up but lots of work to do

AttributionThe Case for Incrementality

There is no ideal way to do attribution

How you optimise campaigns is directly linked to likely incremental impact on your business

Click

Based

Conversion

Based

Incremental

Based

Optimise to

expensive

clickers

Optimise to

high intent

likely

converters

Optimise to

actual uplift but

hard to do

Click CPA Conversion Rate Lift Incremental Revenue

$46 -14.72% -$26,479.00

$102.75 +12.36% +$56,216.00

We took some of our top customers and they agreed to test optimising to incrementality

Click

Based

Increm.

Based

They all saw an increase in conversion rates

+ 15.79% + 18.5% + 36% + 5.62%

Brand A Brand B Brand C Brand D

I know this because I did it in 2014

AttributionOK so how do I get started

You don’t need to run from the start

Last Click Last Touch Add time

decay

Algorithmic

Incrementality

Multi-Touch

Track as much as you can

Pick a partner to work with or get an analyst involved

Questions?

Visit Hall 7 Booth C061Tweet me @shanemurfy