
Attribution Metrics and Performance Marketing in Mobile
Are you reading this article on a mobile device? Going by statistics, insights and the scene at any dining table or college cafeteria, you most likely are. We live in a mobile-first world. In an average day, at least one out of four people with access to the internet, only use a smart phone. Moreover, we freely move back and forth between devices to get things done: Over half of this demographic rely on more than one type of device in an average day, with 1/5 of them using another device while concurrently using a computer (Google Insights). Due to the stupendous role mobile phones play in our lives enabling us today to conduct all operations on the move, consumers now have the flexibility to develop curiosity, interest, attraction, and craving for a product, even compare it with similar products and place the order, within moments of viewing its ad on Instagram! But, there is an acute dearth of conclusive data on what determines online consumption today. With the advent of Marketing Attribution, we are closer to solving the mystery of what makes up effective digital marketing. Attribution Metrics is the way in which marketers assess ROI of the strategies/channels that connect them to potential customers. These tools simplify the retailer’s understanding of what it takes to make their products marketable, in the absence of any direct communication between the consumer and the seller (save for review forms and online surveys). To learn which marketing strategy is paying off, which chess piece needs to be moved around to generate better results, Marketing Attribution brings you the best system to standardize and monitor consumer behaviour. Why is accurate attribution so important for your business? The holy grail of media measurement is to analyze the impact and business value of all company-generated marketing interactions across the complex customer journey. Settling to remain in the dark—or worse, working under wrong assumptions—is akin to driving without a navigator. Inaccurate attribution will not only hamper your growth rate, it can also throw you off the right track by generating false impression or sketchy information about the complexities involved in online retail. Various marketing channels combine and permute to convert leads to sales, and the number of such channels is increasing every day with each new feature getting added to social media-verse. Facebook Explore, Instagram Live, Snapchat stories, Twitter buttons and Pinterest redirects are constantly revamping themselves to make it easy for businesses to attract and improve their presence for prospective buyers. This also makes it more difficult for these businesses to generate an actionable analysis of which channel is ultimately responsible for their success or the lack of it. With new agents (for mobile online payment like PayTm or Apple Wallet) being constantly introduced to the cycle reaffirms how important it is for marketing attribution to be constantly vigilant about the newest developments in the field. According to Matt Voda writing for The Make Good, “With accurate attribution comes not just more confidence in the strategies and tactics in place today, but most importantly, better decision-making, improved efficiency and effectiveness, and higher ROI. Accurate attribution helps you confidently zero in on your next best moves.” Attribution will be the biggest challenge marketers face this year Besides facing the perennial challenges of piecing together the product’s lifecycle complicated by dynamic ads, there are privacy and customer trust issues which makes tracking every step of the way difficult, unethical, unprofitable and counterproductive. One aspect that attribution metrics have not yet been able to solve is how offline advertising affects the online purchase. This offline to online transition has made one thing difficult for sure: it is now much harder to estimate the impact of your campaign, especially when it comes to mobile marketing. Developers are still struggling to come up with ways in which cross-channel influencers affect the performance of online ads. The rapidly changing scene today demands granular ad-level analytics to drive day-to-day activities of branding and marketing teams. Different Types of Attribution Models : 1. Single Source Attribution: First or last touch-based attribution takes into account only the channels engaging target audience with the product in the very beginning or the end. Upper Funnel Distribution registers the beginning of a customer’s purchase journey as in the case of programmatic display ads, while Bottom Funnel Attribution makes note of an ad’s ability to close the deal, like run search ads. 2. Multisource attribution: Since both touch points work together in driving conversions, most businesses prefer a model that generates insights on all levels of lead engaging. Multisource attribution credits each channel for their contribution to the final conversion; it includes everything from ads and social posts to webinars and e-newsletters. Also known as equal attribution, this accounts for every involvement in attaining a final sale. “It brings a sense of equality to the process, but at the same time doesn’t take into consideration the idea that certain aspects of the conversion have more weight than others – for example, the first time an ad is shown could arguably have played more of a role in the final conversion than duplicate impressions.” In such cases, weighted attribution proves to be more effective because it facilitates and substantiates these insights with by filing the hierarchy of the roles played by each channel in converting leads to sales. 3. Post-view attribution gives conversion credit to the visibility, reach of the ad. However, this is highly unreliable and quite useless at the end of the day, because while a lot of ads are shown to users, not all of them are necessarily seen. This is why post-click attribution is more useful in eliminating unnecessary data, taking into account only those ads which have generated clicks or redirects to the next stage of purchase (to the company’s website or shopping portal, for example). After the initial touch and before the final touch point before the sale, it doesn’t account for any prior website visits and is thus unable to shed little