For those of you who have worked with our ROII generator, you understand how LPG tracks and attributes sales through the online channels. But what if you are running simultaneous campaigns on various media?...
"Online advertising allows for real-time tracking of impressions, clicks and conversions. However, this granular level of visibility can actually serve to distort the measurement of digital media's impact, to the exclusion of all other contributing factors.
This lack of proper attribution, often referred to as the "last-click" model, has become a major issue. Without knowing to a greater degree of certainty the role various online and offline factors play in leading to a conversion, marketers cannot make the most intelligent media buying decisions. Further, failure to take advantage of the synergistic effects among media vehicles means lessened effectiveness and lower longer-term ROI.
View-throughs -- i.e., when a conversion is tied through a cookie to an earlier banner impression not clicked on -- go one step beyond the click-through, where there is an immediate, trackable action. By tracking from an online impression view-through to the ultimate transaction, some attribution is rightly assigned to the display ad. While view-through measurement can capture the impact of display impressions, a critical shortcoming of this approach is that it ignores the impact of any offline media. For this reason, view-throughs can also lead to over-attribution of conversions tied to digital media."
So how does Dan Eggleston address the issue in "The True ROI of Online Marketing"?...
"Here are a few suggested steps for marketers to balance out attribution in a more equitable fashion:
1 Don't treat any one medium in isolation: Marketers need to account for the complex interactions that occur among all the different media and the fact that consumers are exposed to and interact with their brand/products in a variety of ways. This is the beauty of marketing mix modeling. It accounts for not only the media contributions but all the other factors influencing sales, including operational factors, seasonality, competition, economy, etc.
2 Execute test market "heavy ups": Run media tests in one market that go "heavy" on a particular media element (digital, TV, radio, print, etc.) and lighter on others, while running simultaneous tests in other markets that saturate on different vehicles. Afterward, measure the resulting sales in each market to see where differences occur. Include a market with no media buys as a control.
3 Take a staged approach to media attribution: Use marketing mix modeling to isolate and quantify how many transactions were driven by each media vehicle, then overlay that with a second-stage analysis that helps you understand how offline marketing, as well as display ads, contributed to online website visits and search and display clicks. This gives you a more complete picture of how online engagement was driven through other channels, and allows for proper reallocation of attribution. To get a true depiction of ROI, you need to understand not only who or how many converted through online media but also what drove them to the online channel."
For most of us, our clients will see an increase in marketing opportunities through click-throughs, view-through, impressions, visits to the brick-and-mortar store, phone calls, and actual sales. The key is to ask each and every customer what brought them in. Track that on a simple form you have your clients keep near the cash register with your media property on top of that list. Make sure your client makes it mandatory for each customer to be asked what led them into the store.