Any marketer who works to attract and retain customers online can profess that consumer behavior is constantly shifting. With the explosive growth of social media outlets, video advertising, and mobile marketing, brands are struggling to determine how to profitably add these new marketing channels to their strategy, without sacrificing their core online assets in search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, and more.

Enter Attribution Management.

If you are not familiar with this concept, you need to be. It is quickly becoming the accepted standard for analyzing your customers’ purchase paths, utilizing your data, and optimizing individual online channels for the most cost savings and best customer experience.

Continue reading the full article at  DestinationCRM.com

As part of its “State of…” series of articles with industry executives, AdExchanger.com sat down with Smith to discuss his company, his views on the space, and the state of ClearSaleing today.

AdExchanger.com: What would you say has changed at ClearSaleing since you were acquired by eBay?

RS: There’s an after‑transition effect. For example, Adam Goldberg has left ClearSaleing and is off with his next entrepreneurial opportunity. We’re going through that normal transition that you do. The good news is that with Ebay’s GSI acquisition in January, we have been able to maintain our  autonomy and move forward with our current business plan. We also get access to the GSI customer base as well as some of the cool things that eBay is doing. Finally, eBay will be a customer of ours and we’ll be working with them on some of their strategic initiatives.

Continue reading the full article at AdExhanger.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio, November 10, 2011 – ClearSaleing, an industry leading advertising analytics and attribution platform today announced the launch of ClearSaleing (CS) Barometer™, an advanced analytics solution that enables marketers to measure performance more precisely than ever before. CS Barometer provides deeper and more accurate insight into consumer behavior and the social and economic factors that affect their buying habits, giving marketers the ability to measure performance and react swifter relative to their competitors and other outside influences.

“CS Barometer combines innovative analytics and modeling technologies with hundreds of social and economic indices, allowing marketers to detect and respond fast to fluctuations in their digital marketing performance,” said ClearSaleing president Randy Smith.  “CS Barometer is the first solution to eliminate the complexities and barriers of measuring market and economic influences and empowers marketers with precise insight and confidence to create more targeted and strategic campaigns.”

CS Barometer also provides marketers information around their advertising marketing programs through access to online and offline key performance indicators, including economic information, unemployment rates, housing starts, consumer confidence, and other areas.  Available data includes:

• Economic Indices: Marketers can better understand how economic factors influence marketing success such as how consumer confidence may impact retail marketing tactics to how housing starts influence digital marketing efforts of household goods brands. Specific indices include: quarterly real gross domestic product (GDP), weekly M2 (Money Supply), monthly consumer price index (CPI), monthly producer price index (PPI), monthly consumer confidence index, monthly unemployment rate, monthly retail sales, monthly housing starts, monthly manufacturing and trade inventories and sales, Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index (S&P 500) and others.

• Social Indices: Monitors stats such as Facebook likes and Twitter mentions and enables advertisers to track social buzz as part of their integrated marketing campaign.

• Vertical Indices: Uniquely created for business, finance, services, retail apparel, and retail verticals, these indices are available with pre-populated, channel-specific data for easy search and display of critical metrics.

For more information about ClearSaleing’s advertising analytics and attribution technology, please go to www.ClearSaleing.com.

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments. The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. ClearSaleing is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GSI Commerce. GSI Commerce is an eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) company.

By: Juan Martinez

Randy Smith, president of analytics company ClearSaleing, discusses the GSI Commerce and eBay acquisitions and what his company can do to help clients drive customer loyalty.

Direct Marketing News (DMN): It’s been about 10 months since ClearSaleing was acquired by GSI Commerce and about seven months since GSI was acquired by eBay. How has your company changed in that time?

Randy Smith (ClearSaleing): As with any acquisition you go through some integration which was pretty standard. It was easy and straightforward. The real benefits were access to additional customer bases. EBay ironically was always one of our premier target prospects.  Now we can help them with their own massive digital marketing initiatives. We are clearly looking to invest in our platform and make sure we’re able to help advertisers optimize digital media spend. We’ve been able to surpass the 200 advertisers mark and it’s been an exciting year.

Continue reading the full article at DMNews.com

Optics and Altitude are components of ClearSaleing’s (CS) industry leading Attribution Management Platform. CS Optics provides digital marketers with a holistic, actionable view of campaign performance across all marketing channels. CS Optics is designed as a visually collaborative environment, enabling marketers a shared look at ad spend performance, and quick access to changing campaigns based on key performance indicators (KPI’s).

“Digital marketers have been looking for more robust and immediately actionable insights on the cause-and-effect relationship between digital advertising and advertiser demand, revenue and profit,” said Dustin Engel, Chief strategy officer, ClearSaleing. “They want a deeper view into the effect of various marketing channels, using attribution modeling customized to their unique advertising ecosystem,” he added.

CS Optics’ solution gives marketers a common interface by which to view and share performance data at both the channel and granular levels. CS Optics’ flexible, customized reporting enables marketers to map data against KPI’s such as conversions, profit, contribution percentage and engagement.

CS Optics’ shared, visually collaborative environment includes:

• One-click access to the CS Attribution Suite, enabling users to view KPI’s in multiple attribution and latency models instantly.
• Performance of advertiser-centric marketing initiatives, such as brands, geography, seasonality and brand awareness vs. direct response.
• Tailor the conversation between advertiser and consumer based on pinpointing campaigns as Introducers, Influencers or Closers along the Purchase Path.
• Identify trends based on calendar year, month, trailing seven days and custom date ranges.
• Actionable insights into advertising spend, revenue vs. profit and positive/negative movement within and across marketing channels.

With CS Optics, marketers can fully visualize the insights from ClearSaleing’s enhanced multichannel Attribution Suite. An important benefit is marketers can use the attribution model that works for them to obtain a more precise analysis of channel performance. The CS Attribution Suite offers a rich set of attribution models tailored to the unique needs of each customer. Marketers can also drill down to every customer touchpoint in each channel – whether paid or organic search, display, rich media, or social media – and see exactly how ad spend is working along the path to conversion.

CS Altitude’s attribution model is the latest addition to the industry-leading ClearSaleing Attribution Suite that enables marketers to capitalize on marketing opportunities that exist only for pockets of time such as hours, days, and weeks. Altitude’s quick, actionable insights include:

• Identifying which marketing channels, social media sites, pages, content publishers, display advertisements and keywords are driving revenue.
• Targeting and scaling those marketing channels with significant correlation to customer conversions.
• Determining the impact of marketing channel position in the customer purchase path and impression decay across the display advertising portfolio.
• Allocating marketing budget by attributing a percentage of profit to each customer advertising engagement along the purchase path through objective statistical analysis.
• An industry-first, Dynamic Exclusion to automatically account for and optimize media spend against channel, campaign, and advertisement-level saturation.

“Being the only solution uniquely able to analyze both paid and non-paid media in conjunction with passive and active advertising interactions, ClearSaleing’s Altitude attribution technology gives marketers the insight and tools to act upon a greater level of attribution data,” said Morris Martin, Director of product marketing and strategy, ClearSaleing. “Most importantly, the insights we are providing are specifically geared towards empowering advertisers to achieve greater revenue and profit, in addition to increasing overall demand for their products and services.”

“ClearSaleing is pleased that marketers are moving beyond the “last ad” status quo and increasingly willing to allocate attribution throughout the sales funnel. The addition of CS Altitude to our industry leading CS Attribution Suite gives marketers the most precise, adaptive, and robust look at all aspects in the marketing mix that influence customer behavior,” Martin said.

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments. The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. ClearSaleing is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GSI Commerce Inc. (Nasdaq:GSIC).

This focus on generating results and driving innovation have been the core focuses of our organization, and these fundamental goals have ushered in this next evolution of our company and the industry.

I am excited to share that, as of this morning, GSI Commerce announced the acquisition of ClearSaleing.  I am extremely excited about what this acquisition will mean for our clients, employees, and for advertising analytics and attribution overall. GSI’s client base of more than 500 clients and more than 5,000 employees will provide ample opportunity to further our growth on a global basis and provide the necessary scale and resources to help us meet the massive demand of advertisers seeking advanced advertising analytics and attribution management support.

The scale and resources that are now available to us, as well as the opportunity to work and partner with other leading GSI Global Marketing Services including e-Dialog, Fetchback, M3 Mobile, MBS Insight, Pepperjam, Silverlign, and TrueAction will allow us to continue to pioneer and drive innovation as we have for the past 4 years.

I’d like to congratulate our employees, and thank our valued clients, partners, investors, board members, and the entrepreneurial resources in Columbus and the great state of Ohio for their ongoing support!

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–GSI Commerce Inc. (Nasdaq: GSIC) today announced its Global Marketing Services division has acquired ClearSaleing, a Columbus, Ohio-based provider of advanced advertising analytics and attribution management. The acquisition of ClearSaleing broadens and deepens the division’s portfolio of marketing services offerings and overall market position. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“ClearSaleing’s innovative advertising analytics platform provides today’s marketers and digital agencies with an accurate way to measure, compare and optimize profit and ROI of their online advertising campaigns,” said Chris Saridakis, chief executive officer of GSI’s Global Marketing Services division. “The U.S. digital advertising market is $25.8 billion.¹ ClearSaleing gives marketers the ability to understand the entire customer purchase path and how each online channel works to move a customer from acquisition to conversion, which helps deliver stronger performing marketing programs. We’re very pleased to welcome ClearSaleing to GSI.”

“ClearSaleing’s advertising analytics and attribution platform is the solution for the limited last-click measurement model online marketers and advertisers have been stuck with for far too long. ClearSaleing gives marketers the tools and intelligence to manage their overall media mix and fine tune the message of their campaigns,” said Randy Smith, chief executive officer of ClearSaleing. “GSI’s multichannel approach to marketing services and entrepreneurial culture makes this a strong fit for ClearSaleing and our clients. We’ll be able to continue to develop our technology while taking advantage of GSI’s broader resources and market position.”

ClearSaleing’s Attribution Management product was named a Leader in the independent October 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. report, The Forrester Wave™: Interactive Attribution Q4 2009, for its ease of use, custom analytics and appeal to a wide array of marketers. For the past year, TrueAction, a full-service digital agency within GSI’s Global Marketing Services division, has been using ClearSaleing’s attribution marketing platform to help 60 of its clients improve efficiency in decision making and increase productivity from automation and reporting by providing more accurate attribution analysis. Other ClearSaleing clients include companies such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance. The investment banking firm Petsky Prunier represented ClearSaleing in this transaction.

Deann Harvey, currently chief sales officer of GSI’s Global Marketing Services division, will serve as ClearSaleing’s chief revenue officer effective immediately. She will be responsible for building ClearSaleing’s sales team and growing its client base among global advertisers and agencies.

ClearSaleing will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of GSI’s Global Marketing Services division which provides a comprehensive set of interactive marketing solutions to help clients drive customer acquisition, conversion and loyalty across multiple channels. With the addition of ClearSaleing, the division now includes eight leading marketing services companies: e-Dialog, FetchBack, M3 Mobile, MBS Insight, Pepperjam, Silverlign and TrueAction. The company plans to integrate ClearSaleing into these other marketing services platforms. For more information, visit http://gsicommerce.com/marketing_services.

About GSI Commerce

GSI Commerce® enables e-commerce, multichannel retailing and digital marketing for global enterprises in the U.S. and internationally. GSI’s e-commerce services which include technology, order management, payment processing, fulfillment and customer care, are available on a modular basis or as part of an integrated solution. GSI’s Global Marketing Services division provides innovative digital marketing products and services comprised of design through TrueAction and Silverlign, e-mail marketing through e-Dialog, affiliate marketing through Pepperjam, retargeting through Fetchback, mobile marketing through M3 Mobile and database marketing through MBS Insight. Additionally, GSI provides brands and retailers platforms to engage directly with consumers through RueLaLa.com, an online private sale shopping destination, and ShopRunner.com, a members-only shopping service that offers unlimited free two-day shipping and free shipping on returns for a $79 annual subscription.

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing is an industry-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. ClearSaleing enables innovative advertisers to increase sales volume and overall media mix profitability across their complex mix of advertising investments. The ClearSaleing platform and related services allow innovative clients such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance to achieve true transparency across their marketing mix performance and to understand which marketing channels are most influential to profit, engagement, and overall return on investment. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements made in this release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. The words “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “guidance,” “potential,” “opportunity,” “continue,” “project,” “forecast,” “confident,” “prospects,” “schedule” and similar expressions typically are used to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business of GSI Commerce. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Factors which may affect GSI Commerce’s business, financial condition and operating results include the effects of changes in the economy, consumer spending, the financial markets and the industries in which GSI Commerce and its clients operate, changes affecting the Internet and e-commerce, the ability of GSI Commerce to develop and maintain relationships with strategic partners and suppliers and the timing of its establishment, extension or termination of its relationships with clients, the ability of GSI Commerce to timely and successfully develop, maintain and protect its technology, confidential and proprietary information, and product and service offerings and execute operationally, the ability of GSI Commerce to attract and retain qualified personnel, and the ability of GSI Commerce to successfully integrate its acquisitions of other businesses and the performance of acquired businesses. More information about potential factors that could affect GSI Commerce can be found in its most recent Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other reports and statements filed by GSI Commerce with the SEC. GSI Commerce expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

¹ eMarketer Web site, December 21, 2010

If you want to increase your odds of being considered, and even more importantly, increase your odds of winning, then you need to engage consumers as early as possible in the buying cycle…

Continue reading on Search Engine Watch Blog…

Rather than trust the myriad studies done by search engines and other third parties about the impact of online advertising to offline conversions, you need to implement a system that truly ties your online ad spend to your offline conversions. What most marketers don’t realize is that some simple techniques actually allow you to do this…

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