TrendSet: Marketers reassessing attribution measurement

The great thing about digital media is that almost everything is trackable; the difficult thing about digital media is that almost everything is trackable.

Despite technological advances in testing models, predictive programs, multitouch tracking, and media mix modeling, attribution models still often fall short of expectations.

Which has led many to realize that in the world of media attribution modeling, sometimes less is more.

Part of this re-evaluation comes from the fact that most media buys are behind the walled gardens of the biggest tech players in the industry. And although many third-party vendors claim to have the ability to see inside, few have actually or accurately found a sustainable solution to attribution.

What these attribution solutions have done, however, is siphon off meaningful media dollars that could be better spent driving performance.Some industry estimates have found that some of the largest media campaigns can end up spending a quarter of their budget on attribution measurement.

Attribution is an essential component of measuring performance. But instead of relying too heavily on attribution tech vendors. Campaigns can realign media mix, messaging, especially in the conversion phase, knowing that even the most sophisticated tech cannot track everything.

By having a baseline CPA goal and average, sophisticated marketers can apply critical thinking to de-dupe similar channels, and to apply conversion trends holistically across the entire campaign. And by doing so, campaign will have extra media dollars to drive better results.