For years now, marketers have been able to buying display advertising, either by cost per impression (CPM), cost-per-click (CPC), or cost per action (CPA). More companies are opting for the CPA route, which on the surface seems like a much safer bet.

True to its word, CPA advertising means you only pay when you get an action or conversion, which can vary depending on the advertiser’s business model. Some common actions include a lead, an order, a download, a white paper view, or a demo.

The benefit is that the advertiser doesn’t pay for a non-action generating activity. Most marketers are savvy enough to negotiate the price they pay for actions from display networks. However, they don’t negotiate the terms as to what constitutes an action.

When buying display in a CPA model, there is typically a window of time in which a display provider can claim credit for an action. That window of time is defined as a look-back window — typically 30 days — from the time of conversion. So, in essence, any customer of yours that saw or clicked a display ad, as well as those that coincidentally was on a page with a display ad that they didn’t even see, in that window of time and converted is then claimed by the display network as an action that they deserve to be paid for.

Some display networks claim to have a reach in excess of 90 percent. By virtue then, more than 90 percent of your orders will be claimed by a display ad network. Does any marketer truly believe a display network deserves to be credited for more than 90 percent of their orders?

Unfortunately, marketers without the ability to see view through or post-impression data are forced to accept these terms at face value. Other marketers that have the ability to track an entire purchase path and truly see the impact of view-throughs and clicks on display ads, have the ability to define what truly constitutes an action worthy enough to pay a display network.

Let’s look at three examples of purchase paths that involve display, and how a marketer can use this data to negotiate a better definition of an action:

• Purchase Path 1: Display ad view through promoting diamond earrings -> Paid Search ad for diamond earrings -> Paid search brand term advertised in display ad -> Conversion

• Purchase Path 2: Paid search ad for diamond earrings -> Display retargeting diamond earrings -> Conversion

• Purchase Path 3: Display ad view through promoting diamond earrings -> (29 days pass) Paid search ad for diamond earrings -> Conversion

In Purchase Path 1, it seems clear that the use of display promoting diamond earrings was the impetus for the paid search that followed and the ultimate conversion. All marketers would agree the display was integral for making this action occur.

In Purchase Path 2, the person already had interest in looking for diamond earrings, they didn’t buy immediately, then were somewhere on the Internet when retargeting kicked in, and then they converted at a later point in time. In this scenario, it’s debatable if that display ad was necessary in getting that consumer to convert. The consumer might’ve already decided to buy but was just taking their time, when a retargeting ad was shown. In that case, the display ad was unnecessary. Or, the consumer could’ve been on the fence about buying diamond earrings, and the retargeted ad pushed them over and led to the action.

In Purchase Path 3, the sequence is similar to Purchase Path 1, except in this case 29 days elapsed between the display impression and the paid search ad. Most marketers, and a lot of advertising research, would agree that an impression’s rate of decay on a consumers mind is less than 29 days. Therefore, it’s unlikely that this impression had a bearing on the paid search that ultimately led to the sale.

A display ad network would’ve received compensation for the three actions in the three purchase paths because an impression was served within that 30-day window. But marketers can clearly see that the value of those impressions in the three examples is different. Shouldn’t we be paying display ad networks on some sort of scale for actions versus treating all actions that were exposed to display as being equal value?

Some of our clients have the purchase path data described above and have successfully negotiated the definition of an action to a display network. In some cases, even though an impression was served (Purchase Path 3), they aren’t paying one cent for that action.

In other cases, they’re paying partial credit (Purchase Path 2). Finally, when it’s 100 percent clear that the display impression was 100 percent integral to the action, they’re paying the full CPA.

Attribution is about giving credit where credit is due. Attribution is also about paying for credit when credit is due. With the ability to track the entire purchase path, marketers now have the ability to negotiate and define what “A” is in CPA when it comes to display.

Attribution Management is about giving credit where credit is due. In the process of applying attribution management to measure your online media, there is a lot of other information that can be garnered and turned into action. In this free webinar,  ClearSaleing CIO and Co-Founder Adam Goldberg, will discuss some of the other data that is available, and how to capitalize on it, like:

• How to negotiate better rates from display networks
• How to negotiate with your affiliates
• How to identify opportunities for cross-sell/up-sell
• The impact of latency and how to account for it
• How lowering your quality score can increase your profits

Register now

At the same time attribution was picking up steam on the conference circuit, and being discussed by research firms like Forrester Research and Jupiter Research (now owned by Forrester), the search engines began to pay attention to this topic, starting with Yahoo. In the Yahoo advertising interface, they began to represent not only the conversions at the keyword level, but also what they called an assist. An assist is when a keyword is used in a purchase path, but was not the last keyword clicked prior to conversion. After that, Microsoft, through the Atlas institute, coined the term ‘Engagement Mapping’, which utilized the Atlas ad server to provide attribution data across search and display media. Then, in 2010, Google entered the foray into attribution with the Google Search Funnel product, which performs like Yahoo, but has a lot more analytics around the data to dive deeper into these paths.

One question that we often get is, “I don’t have enough money to invest in a product like ClearSaleing, so what else is out there?”  Or, “My company is still skeptical that attribution would benefit us.  Is there a way I can prove that our customers do navigate paths and attribution would be beneficial?”  One product worth taking a look at that is free is the Google Search Funnel product. Though this product is far from perfect, and leaves a lot open to interpretation, any product that shows beyond the last click can help you to improve the performance of your overall campaigns.

From there, we usually get several follow up questions:

• What would be the first thing you focus on when using the Google Search Funnel product?
  • When we look at Purchase Path reporting from ClearSaleing’s technology and focus solely on paths that involve AdWords ads, one thing jumps out at us across our entire client base: when there are 2 or more AdWords ads used in a Purchase Path, the last ad clicked is more often than not one of our clients branded terms. A branded term is a company’s name or misspelling/typo of it. When we look at the terms that precede the branded term, they are mainly general, product specific, need specific, or a model number.  Usually they are non-branded terms, as seen in the graphic below.

(Click to enlarge)

• Therefore, under a last click world, branded terms end up stealing a lot of credit from the non-branded terms that preceded them. So, if I was going to look at one thing in the Search Funnels report, I would look at paths that end in brand terms to see how often non-brand terms come before them. Then I would look at how those non-brand terms are valued under last click and determine if they should be given more credit. We have found that when consumers use brand terms at the end of a Purchase Path, they are doing so to navigate back to the site they’ve already decided to buy from, therefore, it makes sense to credit the ads that were NOT used simply for navigation purposes.
• When I look at the path length report in Google, it shows me the number of conversions that took one click, two clicks, three clicks, four clicks and so on, it shows that most of my conversions occurred with just one click. Does this mean that attribution is not something I need to worry about?
  • There are a few things needed to keep in mind when looking at these reports:
    • This data only pertains to Google AdWords, so if a client went from a Yahoo ad to a Google ad, it would be represented in Google as a one click path, when in reality, it was a 2 click path.
    • On a similar note, paid search isn’t the only advertising source out there. So, if you’re using anything outside of paid search – display, affiliates, shopping engines, etc. – these are not being represented in the paths.
    • At ClearSaleing, we use three simple categories to place ads in: Introducers – the first ad a person clicks or sees en route to conversion; Closers – the last ad a person clicks/sees prior to conversion; Influencers – the ads in between Introducers and Closers. When we acquire a new customer that has been using a last click attribution method prior to coming to us, they cannot justify spending money on Introducers and Influencers; they can only justify spending on Closers. You are likely in the same boat. Therefore, their data in the beginning looks as if attribution does not occur.  One thing that we get our customers to do that you should also test is to activate some of the more general terms in your account, and with the use of Google’s Search Funnels, see if these types of terms show their value by being an Introducer or Influencer in other paths. Over time, our clients generally discover their customers walk down more paths than when they started with us because they have the data to support investing on ads and ad sources that introduce and influence.
    • Using Google Search Funnels, I found a collection of keywords that provide a lot of assists, but barely close. What should I bid for these terms?
      • Unfortunately, this is a really difficult question to answer. If you were a company that only sold one product, or every product you sold produced the same amount of profit, you could figure out what these assists are worth. If you sell many different products with many different margins, it’s impossible to know the value of these assists. The ideal method for evaluating these would be to know how much profit was earned on a conversion the keyword assisted, so you could assign it some profit credit and then you could come up with a bid to meet your business goals. Google will most likely never be able to produce profit figures because that would require companies to share margin data with Google, which is highly unlikely. Google could, however, take the revenue earned on that conversion (assuming you are an etailer) and attribute a portion of that to the assists, so that you could make a more accurate bid decision.

Though the Google Search Funnel product is not perfect, it does provide a lot of valuable reports that if one takes the time to use them and analyze the data, one can certainly improve the performance of their campaigns. If you have experience using the Search Funnel product, we welcome your comments, or if you have questions about attribution, as always, feel free to contact us.

This free webinar discussed:

• How different marketing tactics tend to come in at different points in the conversion funnel
• Why it is important to provide credit to the entire purchase path a user utilizes to convert
• How seeing Purchase Paths provides opportunities to see what channels are doing for themselves and others
• How understanding the complete picture for PPC upper funnel terms impacted accounts
• How attributed data has been a component in successfully driving down CPA
• How impression tracking proves the true value of display

View the webinar now. (Registration required)

Columbus, Ohio (PRWEB) June 23, 2010 — From first to ‘last click’ and beyond, agencies executing at an optimum level today are incorporating sophisticated advertising analytics into their client service. They realize the importance of seeing how, and when, each element in the marketing mix affects a customer action along the ‘purchase path.’

A classic example is Princeton, New Jersey-based Rosetta, which is employing ClearSaleing’s attribution management platform with significant results in reducing CPA, improving campaign effectiveness and precision, and increasing campaign ROI.

Rosetta will discuss how ClearSaleing’s attribution management technology has improved client performance during a June 30th webinar titled, “Looking Beyond Last Click: Rosetta’s Approach to Interactive Attribution.” This free webinar begins at 1PM EDT/10 AM PDT and will be webcast by Search Engine Strategies San Francisco, ClickZ.com and SearchEngineWatch.com.

Applications such as ClearSaleing’s attribution management give us the ability to match spend decisions against each decision point in a customer’s purchase path

“At ClearSaleing, we’re passionate about the very realizable effects attribution management can have on digital marketing performance. Agencies such as Rosetta are our proof point that attribution brings measurable ROI results,” said ClearSaleing co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Adam Goldberg. Goldberg will serve as the webinar’s moderator.

Joining Goldberg will be Brean Bark, Analytics and Optimization Manager, Rosetta, and Aaron Smith, Manager, Search, Online and Social Media, Rosetta. Bark’s position focuses on multi-channel implementations, while Smith currently serves as lead strategist on some of Rosetta’s largest accounts.

“As the marketing mix gets increasingly complex, agencies need to further fine tune their marketing spend decisions. Applications such as ClearSaleing’s attribution management give us the ability to match spend decisions against each decision point in a customer’s purchase path,” said Bark. “With ClearSaleing, we give our clients peak performance at every step.”

The webinar will cover:

• How different marketing tactics tend to come in at different points in the conversion funnel
• Why it is important to provide credit to the entire purchase path a user utilizes to convert
• How seeing Purchase Paths provides opportunities to see what channels are doing for themselves and others
• How understanding the complete picture for PPC upper funnel terms impacted accounts
• How attributed data has been a component in successfully driving down CPA
• How impression tracking proves the true value of display

Register for the webinar

About ClearSaleing

ClearSaleing has been named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES (Search Engine Strategies) Awards. ClearSaleing’s advertising portfolio management platform helps marketers identify ways to more effectively and profitably allocate ad spend across a complex mix of online advertising investments.

ClearSaleing is a thought leader in the growing scientific field of attribution management and publishes www.AttributionManagement.com that provides a rich repository of ClearSaleing and externally published articles, white papers and other material focused exclusively on attribution management.

ClearSaleing’s unique ability to give marketers telescopic insight into their online ad investment is attracting major brand customers such as American Greetings and Nationwide Insurance. ClearSaleing has been recognized by Forrester Research, Inc. as an Interactive Attribution “Leader” in an independent report: The Forrester WaveTM: Interactive Attribution, Q4 2009 (October 2009).

The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, please visit www.ClearSaleing.com.

About Rosetta

Founded in 1998, Rosetta has rapidly become the largest independent interactive agency in the US. AdAge ranks it amongst the top ten digital agencies and the fastest growing agency within the top 50. Rosetta recently expanded its offerings within professional healthcare marketing by acquiring Wishbone-ITP, an award-winning pharmaceutical agency. Rosetta is rated a “strong performer” in a recently published Forrester Wave report. Using a patented approach to segmentation, called Personality® Segmentation, which provides deep insights into the underlying drivers of consumer behavior, Rosetta builds its clients’ brands by identifying, understanding and enhancing relationships with its customers. Rosetta’s industry-focused marketers and creative teams translate these insights into relevant marketing solutions that use world-class technology, search and media to attract, retain and strengthen a brand’s most valuable customer relationships.

Rosetta brings deep industry expertise to its client work within the Retail & Consumer Products; Healthcare; Financial Services; Communications, Media & Technology; Travel & Leisure and B2B markets. Rosetta’s clients include OfficeMax, Coach, Jos. A. Bank, Express, and Tractor Supply (retail); Allergan, Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, and Otsuka (healthcare); Citizens, HSBC, Nationwide and Fidelity (financial services); and Marriott (travel and leisure), Microsoft and T-Mobile (communications, media & technology).

Rosetta is headquartered in Princeton, NJ, with additional offices in New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Denver and Toronto.

For more information, visit http://www.rosetta.com.

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Rosetta’s command of ClearSaleing’s attribution management technology has helped them improve client performance in many ways. Join us for this free webinar to discover more about:

• How different marketing tactics tend to come in at different points in the conversion funnel
• Why it is important to provide credit to the entire purchase path a user utilizes to convert
• How seeing Purchase Paths provides opportunities to see what channels are doing for themselves and others
• How understanding the complete picture for PPC upper funnel terms impacted accounts
• How attributed data has been a component in successfully driving down CPA
• How impression tracking proves the true value of display

Speakers during the webinar include Rosetta’s Analytics and Optimization Manager, Brean  Bark, along with Search, Online and Social Media Manager, Aaron Smith. The discussion is moderated by ClearSaleing’s co-founder and CIO, Adam Goldberg.

Register now for this free webinar.

While companies jockeyed to accurately measure the success of internet advertising, Columbus-based ClearSaleing Inc. has become a leader in ensuring its clients are getting the most bang for their online advertising buck… continue article reading on hiVelocity Blog

In previous posts, I’ve tried to explain the reasons behind the frustrating fact that some report data just won’t ever match.  This week’s topic is a no-brainer.  To best describe why reports created by pulling data from different data sources won’t match other reports, let’s see it visually.

So, why is this a problem?  Say you haven’t configured your web analytics to track your PPC, or maybe an agency is managing your PPC, but you have not given them access to your web analytics, so you must rely on the data the search engines provide.  Inevitably, someone in your organization is going to want a roll-up or an executive summary of all the engines.  The result is then the creation of a report from disparate data sets.

The problem – each vendor report is not aware of the other vendors.  So, in the example below, each vendor report will claim credit for the entire purchase and claim all of the revenue.

As you can see, this greatly overvalues the conversion and creates an unrealistic view of the performance.
If you do try to compare the compiled report to your web analytics, there will be a problem as to how web analytics will credit that sale, as you can see below.

The real need is to conceptually ‘divide up’ the order and revenue and give everything credit.

By thinking about dividing up credit, you more accurately value the contribution of each advertising source.  With this accurate and comprehensive picture, you can really optimize your spending, ensuring that you focus your spend, time and attention on what truly is working. What you may then find clicks (and impressions) that occur at the very beginning of the ‘funnel’ are getting the credit they deserve, so you may be able to increase bids on your more general keywords or show true ROI on banner impressions.

• How to analyze your current attribution management status (or lack of it);
• Are there any good tools available?
• Which ads and sources should get credit?
• Is path analysis a waste of time?
• Will attribution pull dollars away from search?
• And much more…

View the webinar now. (Registration required)

All reports are not created equally nor are they calculated the same way.  In an attribution world, there are two types of reports, ones that factor in attribution and ones that don’t.

The two types of reports have two different purposes:

• Operational Reports
• Performance Reports

Operational Reports

Operational reports don’t factor in attribution.  Operational reports are reports used to measure how your business is doing.  Operational reports are used to ensure there is nothing ‘broken.’  Operational reports include reports run from your ecommerce system, most traditional web analytics reports and reports that are compiled from several different sources.

Performance Reports

Attribution is crucial for performance reports.  Performance reports are used to judge how well your advertising is performing.  Performance reports also take into consideration latency and latent conversions described in my last post.

Both reports are extremely useful.  The problem arises when you try to compare an operational report to a performance report.  One common example of this  that I see is when a new ClearSaleing customer attempts to compare a report from their web database, an order report or a booking report, to the ‘All Sources’ screen of the Performance tab or any other report that factors in attribution.

These two reports will never ‘match,’ nor should they.  Operations reports give 100% of credit to the last click, 100% credit to the date and source of conversion (no attribution).  Performance reports divide up the credit and attributes it to each date and source that led up to the conversion (attribution).

So before you try to compare two reports, take a step back.  Think about the report that you are trying to compare to a performance (attribution) report.  Does the report factor in attribution?  If the report is coming from your ecommerce database or booking engine, or even your traditional web analytics, it probably does not use attribution.