Evolving Beyond Last Ad Attribution to a Dynamic Model with Objectivity and Accountability - Brian Lesser - MediaBizBloggers

The lack of a viable attribution method has proven to be one of the most confounding dilemmas facing digital marketers The last ad gets all the credit for a conversion regardless of the preceding exposure stream This logic is clearly flawed But last ad metrics consistently permeate digital media reportsThe use of the last ad model drives budgets toward bottomfunnel tactics while the topfunnel suffers from under investment Compounding this the industry continues to struggle with basic issues such as the appropriate budget allocation across display and searchThere is a profound disconnect between expectations of what should be possible and the digital marketer39s ability to deliver Terabytes of digital data create the prospect of real time intelligence and smart decision making but digital metric models are significantly flawedUltimately the lack of reliable measurement undermines the overall accountability model for the digital sector And lack of faith in the metrics means lower investment while the potential for increased spend is stuck on the horizonIn charting the path to a solution it is instructive to understand how the industry wound up in this predicament in the first placeThe birth of digital media in the late 90s was followed by the realization that offline measurement models do not translate to new media This engendered extreme uncertainty regarding appropriate metrics The industry needed a solution to grow amp8211 and needed one quickly Last ad attribution delivered a solution that was simple to implement and at the time seemed intuitiveTechnology provided another constraint Digital tracking generates terabytes of data and sophisticated attribution models need very advanced technology to churn through all this data Ten years ago the technology was not up to the taskThe last ad model may have been the best solution we had available a decade ago And perhaps the last ad model deserves credit for helping the digital media grow out of its infancy phase However the industry has evolved and so has the technology So why have the measurement systems not followedUnfortunately standards tend to have a life of their own The more people adopt a standard the more ingrained and harder it is to change In other words the last ad model has stuck largely for the same reason that Microsoft Windows did amp8211 first mover advantage effect in a highlynetworked and interdependent ecosystemWhile the transition to next generation attribution is a daunting challenge the climate is ripe for change The disillusionment with last ad measurement is pervasive and profound And the advent of cloud computing has lowered the technological hurdlesTransition to dynamic attribution requires the right model and the right team First let us take a look at the success factors for the modelamp183 Objectivity Next gen attribution models must be factbased and driven by algorithms rather than by subjective judgment or assumptionsamp183 Accountability The model must deliver a measure of marketing effectiveness that is better than the last ad model This requires explicit benchmarks that support the transition away from the last adamp183 Usability Digital marketers require an agile solution that can easily merge with existing reporting systems to deliver the daily and weekly insights required for rapidcycle optimizationLongterm success will also depend on the organization tasked with deliveryamp183 Technology Crunching terabytes of data daily is still an expensive proposition and one that requires significant investment in the latest systems and a highly specialized team to operate themamp183 Scale The technology investments outlined above require access to a large number of clients to generate the right price proposition through scale This explains why individual agencies may struggle in taking their solution to marketamp183 Knowledge Technology and scale will only drive the collection of data To turn these terabytes of daily data into actionable insights will require investments in top notch econometrics focused teams with analytics prowessThe last ad model has become entrenched in the industry by default and its longevity is predicated on the fact that no one has successfully commercialized a better solution It is only a matter of time before the industry shifts to a new standard that delivers the accountability required for continued growthThe Media Innovation Group MIG is looking provide that standard with our recently launched ZAP Attribution solution In developing ZAP Attribution we focused on the two major gaps mentioned above amp8211 lack of objectivity and lack of accountabilityZAP Attribution is powered by an algorithm that determines the impact of each impression on conversion ZAP Attribution is one hundred percent datadriven There are no assumptions and the model delivers factbased unbiased results This in and of itself is an important step forward for the industryThe attribution challenge goes beyond merely assigning credit beyond the last impression The attribution algorithm should accurately predict the impact of an optimization decision on performance We have benchmarked ZAP Attribution relative to the last ad model in terms of its predictive power and our solution outperforms by a wide margin This means that optimization decisions based on ZAP Attribution metrics will actually deliver the intended gains in performance It is this gain in predictive power that differentiates ZAP Attribution from other solutions on the market and will be the driving force behind its adoptionBrian Lesser is SVP General Manager of the Media Innovation Group MIG a unit of GroupM holding company WPPRead all Brian39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Musings from GroupMCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerMediaBizBloggers is an openthought leadership blog platform for media marketing and advertising professionals companies and organizations To contribute contact Jackmediadvisorygroupcom The opinions expressed in MediaBizBloggerscom are not those of Media Advisory Group its employees or other MediaBizBloggerscom contributors Media Advisory Group accepts no responsibility for the views of MediaBizBloggers authors

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Evolving Beyond Last Ad Attribution to a Dynamic Model with Objectivity and Accountability - Brian Lesser - MediaBizBloggers

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