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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Made possible by
Navigating the Complexities of
Cross-Platform Attribution
Lauren T. Fisher
Senior Analyst
October 6, 2016

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Today’s Agenda
 Assess the current state of attribution
 Discuss common roadblocks to implementation
 Identify future areas of development and advancement

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
What is attribution?
 The practice of
assigning credit to
any advertising- or
marketing-driven
interaction or other
brand-imposed
touchpoint

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
The explosion of devices and touchpoints has
made cross-platform attribution a must

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
This
complexity,
among other
challenges,
has made
attribution a
significant
area of
concern for
many
marketers

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Those using
attribution are
still in the
minority

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About half of US companies will shift to
multichannel attribution models by 2017
 But remember:
This is only the
number of
companies using
it for digital
media

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Cross-screen complexities aren’t the only things
sidelining marketers
 Cost, expertise and
organizational silos
also delay
attribution
adoption and usage

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Roadblocks to Overcome:
Setting Up for Attribution
Success

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Interest in
more
advanced
attribution
methods is
high

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But getting sign-off on these tools and platforms
can be difficult

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Winning budgets and justifying long-term value
can prove tricky, but essential
“When it comes to implementing a DMP or an
attribution platform, these are new cost items
that haven’t necessarily been slotted into the budget
mix. How do you fund that? How do you make a case
to management that this six-digit investment
that probably won’t be up and running at any sort of
meaningful scale for six to 13 months is going to
pay for itself on the other end of this?”
—Rob Griffin, Chief Innovation Officer, Almighty

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For most, arriving at a ‘single point of truth’
proves a powerful case for attribution

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But to get
there requires
companies to
make multiple
tools and tech
work together

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Achieving
full-scale
system
integration
is still an
industrywide
pursuit

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Many lack
proper
coordination
and expertise
required for
such
integration

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But more often, organizational and departmental
silos impede proper data share and integrations

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Data
integration
and
accessibility
are key to
making
attribution
work, but so
is data quality

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
When it comes to attribution, it’s garbage in,
garbage out

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Common data quality issues marketers must vet
for include:
 Fidelity of owned and tracked data
 Fraud and viewability
 Accuracy of purchased data
 Compatibility of device-level data; online-to-offline
(O2O) data

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Cross-device and the lack of a universal
identifier poses even bigger challenges
“Cross-device targeting came ‘to the masses’ in
2015. That resulted in a lot of conversations about
deterministic and probabilistic data. But what we still
see is that cross-device attribution is still very much
in its infancy and there are no standards around
it yet. Between what ID you have on one platform vs.
what kind of ID you have on another, it ends up
becoming very complicated … and the resulting
attribution can look entirely different.”
—Alan Beiagi, Senior Director, Products, DataXu

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To combat this and other data quality issues,
many utilize first-party data for known users

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
The Attribution To-Do List:
 Audit current digital
measurement strategy
 Identify where sales data
is being captured
 Take stock of tech
 Decide: Is this enough?
 If not, choose a vendor

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Looking Ahead: The Future
of Attribution

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
A more cohesive blending of top-down
and bottom-up models
1

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In the past, most marketers have used one of
two attribution methods:
Top Down
 Branding, traditional media
(print, TV, etc.)
 Econometrics, marketing-
mix modeling
 Uses GRPs/impressions,
spend, sales data, external
data to model attribution
 Budget allocation and media
planning
Bottom Up
 Native to digital
 Path analysis
 Uses cookies and other
web data to analyze
actual activity
 Optimization,
performance

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
But of late, many seek greater convergence
between the two
Image credit: Shutterstock

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Still, such solutions are works in progress
“We see a lot of people doing this today, but they’re kind
of duct-taping it together and trying to fit a
square peg in a round hole. And so marketers are left
scratching their heads and wanting to try and figure
out how to improve the data discrepancies and how
to make user-level and aggregate-level data
work together.”
—Amy Mitchell, General Manager, Convertro, an AOL company

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A move to more real-time reporting
2

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As capabilities improve, rear-view reporting will
become a thing of the past

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
The ultimate aim of attribution is to move from
this:
To this:Company
Level
Is my
advertising/marketing
successful?
Department Level
Was this campaign successful?
Team Level
Was this tactic successful?
Company Level
Is my advertising/marketing
successful?
Department Level
Was this campaign
successful?
Team Level
Was this tactic successful?

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Addressable media is the most malleable at the
moment
 But long-term,
traditional
media will
become more
and more
addressable

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
But remember: Automation and algorithms are
marketing assets, not marketing absolutes
“Oftentimes marketers immediately want
to jump to optimizing. Shut that off. Turn that
on. Move money from here to here. And they
may be reacting to an anomaly and not a
true pattern. So there’s definitely a balance in
terms of timely data availability and a deep
enough and big enough sample to make sound
decisions.”
—Jon Schulz, CMO, Viant

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Greater online-to-offline sales
attribution
3

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Attributing all
the way down to
the sale has
become ‘mission
critical’

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Tying online to offline (O2O) may be an
imperative, but it’s still a work in progress
“Even with just online, being able to connect the
dots across different devices and publishers is
already hard enough. And to be able to tie
online transactions to offline sales is
even harder, because a lot of the time
advertisers just don’t have the right
technologies and tools in order to do so.”
—Anh Bui, Product Marketing Manager, Facebook

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Data matching capabilities are improving, but
there are still pitfalls

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Location data
can prove a
rich source of
O2O info, but
its fidelity is
increasingly
being called
into question

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Example in action: an entertainment client
looking to activate monthly paid subscriptions
 The goal: Develop a cross-channel, integrated model that drives
business results using paid, owned and earned media.
 Data in: Primary acquisition KPIs (subscriptions, registrations, monthly
active users), paid media (TV, out-of-home, social, online video, display,
search), owned and earned media (site traffic, organic social and
search, email, PR), competitor media spend, holidays and events,
macroeconomic data, company-/industry-specific business metrics.
 Model used: Marketing mix modeling (MMM) with ‘nested’ levels for
optimization (digital).
 Benefits: Determine optimal channel spend; understand how to
optimize and execute marketing dollars to maximize subscriptions and
lifetime value.

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© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Key Takeaways:
 Marketers can no longer afford to ignore cross-platform
attribution.
 Organizational, technological and data quality issues all
pose significant challenges to making attribution work.
 Blended, more real-time models are now a must.
 Tying O2O data will be critical to truly gauge company
success.

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Lauren T. Fisher
Navigating the Complexities of
Cross-Platform Attribution
 Cracking Cross-Device Attribution in 2016: Data Quality,
Blended Models and Merging Online-Offline Data
 Search and Social Platforms: How Facebook and Others Can
Steal Dollars from Search
 Making Multichannel Marketing Work: Four Tactics Required
for Omnichannel Success
 Ad Fraud in the US: How More Sophisticated Methods Are
Hurting Mobile, Video and Performance Measurement