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)

This famous opening line from A Tale of Two Cities accurately describes the life of two keywords that reside in two very different countries (paid search campaigns). These two keywords were identical twins separated at birth. One keyword moved to Country A, which followed the law of last click attribution. The other keyword moved to Country B, where they followed the law of attribution management.

“It was the spring of hope” for the keyword that moved to Country B; “It was the winter of despair” for the keyword that moved to Country A.

Let’s now examine why these two identical keywords live such very different lives. Each of these keywords are classified as general terms…

Continue reading article on Search Engine Land Blog…

2009 Innovation Awards: Outstanding Product – ClearSaleing from TechColumbus on Vimeo.

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 5 /PRNewswire/ — TechColumbus today announced winners of its annual Innovation Awards, which recognize Central Ohio leaders and companies for their outstanding achievements in technology leadership and innovation in 2009. Thirteen business leaders and two high school students were recognized at a ceremony last evening at the Columbus Convention Center. More than 1,000 people participated in the awards celebration.

“For the past 13 years, individuals, companies and technology teams have come together to nominate and celebrate the best in technology leadership and innovation in Central Ohio,” said Ted Ford, president and CEO of TechColumbus. “These awards showcase the incredible contribution that companies, both large and small, are having in our community and beyond.”

A panel of volunteer judges, made up of leaders in the field of technology and innovation, reviewed each set of nominations by category. The following are this year’s winners:

Innovation Award Winners:

Executive of the Year (Less than 50 Employees):

Alan Arman

Founder & CEO, 3X Systems

Columbus, OH 43212

Executive of the Year (More than 50 Employees):

David Blom

President & CEO, OhioHealth

Columbus, OH 43215

Green Innovation:

Estech USA, LLC

Canal Winchester, OH 43110

Innovation in Non-Profit Service Delivery:

Hilliard, OH 43926

Inventor of the Year:

Joseph Heremans

Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor; Mechanical Engineering & Physics Dept. The Ohio State University

Columbus, OH 43210

Minority-Owned Business Enterprise:

Moody-Nolan, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43215

Outstanding Product (Less than 50 Employees):

ClearSaleing, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43212

Outstanding Product (More than 50 Employees):

Veeam Software

Columbus, OH 43017

Outstanding Service (Less than 50 Employees):

Exacter, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43235

Outstanding Service (More than 50 Employees):

Progressive Medical, Inc.

Westerville, OH 43082

Outstanding Start-up Business:

Exacter, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43235

Outstanding Tech Team:

Weigh in Motion Business Leader, Mettler-Toledo, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43240

Outstanding Woman in Tech:

Cheryl Herbert

President, Dublin Methodist Hospital

Dublin, OH 43016

High School Student:

Alburuj Rahman

Junior, Metro High School

Columbus, OH 43201

High School Student:

Margaret Yatsko

Senior, Columbus School for Girls

Westerville, OH 43081

About TechColumbus (www.techcolumbus.org)

TechColumbus is a nonprofit organization that focuses on technology-based economic development in the 15 counties of central Ohio. TechColumbus accomplishes this by:

• Providing professional development and technology business assistance to both large and small companies that rely on technology for business success
• Managing a 62,000 square foot technology business incubator that has been recognized as one of the best in the country
• Managing TechStart, the $22.5 million Central Ohio Entrepreneurial Signature Program, with a mission to create, finance and launch new tech companies in central Ohio
• Assisting in the development of facilities for tech companies
• Working with state and local organizations to attract new tech companies to the region

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

This is the eighth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This eighth section focuses on Basic Attribution Models.

When engaging with a new attribution management technology, you should be able to start performing attribution on day one out of the box. Though attribution can be a very complex exercise, there are also some simple attribution models that can greatly improve the performance of your online campaigns. To ensure the solution you decide to go with offers attribution models that you can use on day one, ask the following questions:

1. What kind of basic attribution models does your platform offer?

2. Can you verify that using these base attribution models will improve my accuracy and performance?

A robust attribution platform should be able to offer basic attribution models out of the box, such as:

• Even - where conversion credit is spread equally across all participating ads in the Purchase Path
• Even with Exclusions - the even model with the additional ability to exclude specific ads, such as Branded terms, at the end of the Purchase Path
• Path Length – the ability to assign specific percentages to participating ads based on the number of steps in the path

• Rules Based - the ability to assign specific percentages based on the types of ads and the number of steps that are used in each step along the path

An experienced attribution management provider should be able to provide you with case studies or examples of how these basic models were able to increase the accuracy of conversion valuation and, ultimately, how that improved performance, as measured by increased profit and/or ROI.

Of course, the best indicator of an attribution management models success is its ability to grow your own bottom line profit. You’ll need to have a benchmark in place before you start attribution to make sure these models truly are having the desired impact.

Part 9 – Mathematical Attribution

This is the ninth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This ninth section focuses on Mathematical Attribution.

After you find success using basic attribution models, you may want to move to more advanced attribution that allows you to set specific weights for different activities that occur during the purchase path. When selecting an attribution management vendor, it is imperative they offer not only basic attribution models but also provide you the ability to build more sophisticated models either through the use of their technology and/or with their consultative services.

Asking the following questions will ensure you have the ability to be more sophisticated in the future:

1. What kind of customization options do you offer?

2. Do you offer any consultative services that can build custom attribution models?

Moving beyond an Even attribution or an Even with Exclusions model requires an understanding of some complex mathematics. Setting custom attribution rules should not be a subjective exercise and should only be taken on by attribution management vendors with solid statistical and mathematical knowledge. Custom models should be able to include variables like the decay rate of different types of ads, the influence potential of different types of ads, additional time variables, types of products sold, type of customer, impact of social media, etc.

Part 10 – Data Warehousing

This is the tenth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This tenth section focuses on Data Warehousing.

When you make the move to attribution management, you’re going to then be collecting a wealth of information you did not have access to before.  For example, you’re now going to have information for all the ads involved in the sale(s) versus just the last ad. If you are tracking true profit that means you are also going to have individual product information. You also know a lot more about your customers buying behavior since you are able to see all the ads your customer uses versus the last one. To harness this information and to make it actionable, it will require the use of a data warehouse, which can be a powerful marketing intelligence asset for your company.

Ask the following questions to determine how your attribution vendor will allow you to get even more value out of the data being captured:

1. Does your technology reside on a data warehouse?

2. Do you offer a data warehouse as an option?

3. Can the warehoused data be queried to create custom reports?

Attribution management systems that are built upon a data warehouse will provide you with much greater flexibility in building custom models and custom reports. Additionally, it will be able to provide further analytics around things, such as product trends, customer buying behavior and lifetime value, for example.

Conclusion

Sophisticated marketers are keenly aware of the importance of Attribution Management in accurately measuring and improving the performance of their cross‐media advertising campaigns. The challenge for these marketers is to find a robust advertising analytics platform that is built on a foundation of attribution management. Hopefully, this Guide will help you assess whether the solution you’re considering measures up to the robust requirements of an effective attribution management platform.

Want to get more involved in attribution management? We invite you to become a member of the Attribution Management Forum, an online group that represents more than 300 leading marketers from a diverse range of companies across nearly every industry segment. For more information on joining, or for additional information on Attribution Management, visit us online at AttributionManagement.com or ClearSaleing.com.

Check out the remaining blogs in the Attribution Management Buyers Guide series:

Part 1 – Attribution Variables

Part 2 & 3 – Products and Ad Sources Tracked

Part 4 & 5 – Display Advertising and Exclusions

Part 6 & 7 – Purchase Path Stages and Time

This is the sixth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This sixth section focuses on Purchase Path Stages.

Purchase path stages represent specific consideration steps in the overall buying process that a consumer goes through en route to a purchase.

Now that you are valuing ads based on where they occur in the customer buying cycle, it will be important for you to be able to identify and differentiate which specific ads introduce your brand to the customer, which ads influence their buying decision, and which ads close the sale. This information helps you pinpoint how certain ads are having a positive influence on customers in the beginning or middle of the buying cycle versus those at the end that close deals.

One question to ask vendors is, ‘How does your system report on which ads do a great job of introducing people to my business, closing deals, or being an ad that sits in between the two and influences the buying behavior? ‘

An additional benefit of working with a vendor that determines the effectiveness of all relevant ads along the purchase path is that, like most companies starting out in attribution, you will find you have many ads that close deals, but very few that wields influence during the early part of the buying cycle. This type of information highlights opportunities to invest in ads that are effective influencers in the early or middle parts of the buying cycle.

Attribution Management Buyers Guide Part 7 – Time

This is the seventh blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This seventh section focuses on Time.

Time is one of the most impactful variables when performing attribution. Therefore, it is important that the attribution technology utilized provides you a lot of flexibility to apply different time variables and provides a lot of insight about the time it takes consumers to purchase and to navigate through the Purchase Path.

Here are some questions that you should ask of attribution management vendors to ensure that you’ll have the flexibility needed to handle this important variable:

• How is time factored in your tool’s attribution models?
• What kind of flexibility do I have?
• Can you tell me the time from first ad to conversion? Last ad to conversion?
• Can you tell me the time between ad clicks, ad impressions, direct visits, and organic visits in the Purchase Path?
• How long do your cookies last?
• How do I know the appropriate window of time to give credit back to an ad?

The ideal attribution management solution should be flexible with leveraging time as one of the key attribution attributes. Specifically, the solution should allow you to tell the time from first and last click to conversion. It should also be able to measure intervals between all clicks in the Purchase Path. This data, coupled with the ability to set an appropriate time window to apply attribution, will allow you to more accurately attribute proper credit back to the ads that contributed to the sale. In addition, the cookie that the vendor provides should optionally be configurable to last for much greater than 30 days, and it should renew each time that person visits the website.

The ideal attribution management vendor should allow you to easily see the time from first ad to conversion, last ad to conversion, and the time between each ad. The cookie that the vendor provides should last for much greater than 30 days and should renew each time that person visits the website.

This is the fourth blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This fourth section focuses on Banner/Display Advertising.

Most companies have been determining if banner advertising is effective by measuring it the same way they do their pay per click ads, meaning they look at the number of times the banner gets clicked compared to its conversions to its cost. When evaluated under this method, banner advertising rarely looks as if it is performing well enough to continue to invest ad dollars towards. However, there is a hidden value in banners that can only be discovered through proper attribution.

The real value of the banners is their impressions, which help to build brand awareness and to introduce people to your product and services. It’s after being exposed to banners that consumers want to learn more about your business. Typically, after banner exposure, the next activity is to do either a natural search or click on a PPC ad so the user can get to your site, rather than clicking on the banner itself.

If you’re valuing banners the same way you do paid search ads, you will never see the influence that banners have on guiding people down the path to conversion.

If you are doing banner advertising, it is a must that you select an attribution management vendor that measures a banner’s effectiveness not only in terms of clicks, but also the influence impressions have on consumers.   A banner ad can have influence even if no click occurs; therefore, preferred attribution management systems should be able to incorporate banner view‐throughs and banner clicks in their attribution management offering.

Attribution Management Buyers Guide Part 5 – Exclusions

At times, certain ads in a purchase path should not be given credit for the eventual sale. The most common example of this is when a paid search ad for a branded term is clicked at the end of a path, where the branded ad would be excluded because it is simply used for navigational purposes. The user is already sold on purchasing from your site after clicking on one or a series of your ads, then later types in your brand name and clicks on the paid ad to get back to your site before ultimately converting.

By having an attribution management system that allows for exclusions, you can ensure that you’re giving credit to ads involved in the sales process, not the navigation process, and your attribution calculations will be more accurate. Look for a vendor that offers the ability to exclude clicks that should not receive credit.

Given the critical nature of attribution management to advertising analytics, we have created the Attribution Management Buyer’s Guide for marketers to use when selecting an advertising analytics and optimization platform.  The Guide is intended to highlight key attribution management features and functionality that should be available in any advertising analytics solution you select.

This is the second blog in a 10-part blog series for the Attribution Management Buyers Guide. This second section focuses on Products, where we focus specifically on the products or services that were sold as a result of a team of ads.

The most critical question to ask here is, ‘Does the solution show the actual products/services that were sold by order, or do you just report that an order occurred along with the revenue it produced?’

On our previous post, we focused on Attribution Variables, which are the key metrics by which you are valuing conversion credit across the participating team of ads. Of the three metrics we highlighted (conversions, revenue, and profit), profit was the optimal metric to use.

In order to get to profit, an attribution management system needs to be aware of the products you’ve sold so that it can calculate profit by subtracting sales price minus the price of cost of goods sold minus cost of advertising, and then apply tax and shipping rules. If the attribution management system cannot report on products sold, then it cannot produce true profit figures. At best, it will be able to take revenue and allow you to apply a flat margin across all of your sales.

An added benefit of a system that can report on products sold is that it can provide a wealth of information about trending of products you sell, which products get sold together often, and also provide an opportunity for up sell and cross sell in the future.

Attribution Management Buyers Guide Part 3: Ad Sources Tracked

For attribution management to be done correctly, it cannot be done in a silo. Many conversions are the result of multiple forms of advertising. For example, a banner impression leads someone click on a paid search ad, then an organic search, and then they convert. If the solution you’re using is only able to capture paid search, it would be oblivious to the fact that the banner impression is what introduced that person to your brand, and that the organic listing is what eventually closed the deal.

To ensure that you’re getting a system that performs attribution management across all sources (advertising and organic), make sure you ask the vendor the following questions:

• Which ad sources does your system track?
• Do you place tracking code on my website?
  • If the vendor doesn’t offer tracking code, they are solely reliant on information that comes through the APIs of ad sources. The only ad sources that offer APIs today are search engines; therefore, a system that does this is only capable of doing attribution across paid search.
• Do you get all of your data from the APIs of the ad sources?
  • Again, much the like question above, this is an indicator that they only track paid search.
• Do you track direct and organic visits to my site as well?
  • In order to have a full view of attribution, direct and organic visits must be included.

A foundational requirement for attribution management is the ability to track across all online ad sources, not just paid search. And the ability to do that requires your advertising analytics platform to use its own tracking code, instead of relying on the limited information provided through search engine APIs. While the search engine APIs do provide some valuable management information, the data is inadequate when it comes to tracking, classifying and accurately attributing value to the team of ads that led to the sale or conversion.

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SAN JOSE, CA — Search Engine Strategies Conference, (PRWEB) August 11, 2009 — ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, and Vetra Analytics, a marketing analytics provider, today announced an industry breakthrough: the launch of the first attribution management index, American Attribution Index (AAI). The AAI measures the relative effectiveness (purchase attribution) of each media source and influence factor on online consumer conversion.

In addition to the aggregate AAI that represents an overall average index for all companies and industries, ClearSaleing and Vetra are also releasing industry-specific versions of the AAI for target verticals. The vertical industry versions of the American Attribution Index serve as important industry-specific benchmarks for CMO’s and other marketing executives. The vertical AAI indices help executives make informed media selection and budget allocation decisions by pinpointing, on a relative basis, which media sources are working and which sources should be avoided. In essence, online advertising budgets should be allocated in proportion to each media source’s AAI for the respective vertical industry. The media selection and allocation process for large-spending advertisers should be repeated over regular intervals to keep budget allocation decisions synchronized with changes in the indices.

The ability to generate vertical industry attribution indices is the newest development from ClearSaleing’s leading advertising analytics and attribution management platform. The delivery of the indices is made possible through their partnership with Vetra Analytics, who has built the sophisticated attribution models that are the foundation of the indices. “We are incredibly pleased to be partnered with Vetra to fill this huge void that exists in the marketing intelligence and web analytics world. By delivering actionable, industry-specific versions of the American Attribution Index, we will help CMOs make better media selection and allocation decisions that will positively impact both their top and bottom lines,” says Randy Smith, ClearSaleing’s co-founder and President.

“ClearSaleing and Vetra Analytics will use the data generated by the ClearSaleing platform to measure how different advertising channels influence sales in a particular vertical industry,” says Dr. Purush Papatla, President of Vetra Analytics. “This report of attribution indices by vertical sector will be of great value to advertisers and agencies in determining what marketing channels are working within their particular industry, and what relative value each marketing element contributes to a conversion or sale,” Papatla adds.

“Industry benchmarking of the relative influence of each media source on a customer purchase fits neatly with ClearSaleing’s main objective, which is to help marketers more accurately determine which marketing investments are delivering a profitable return. Vertical industry benchmarking will provide more insight into ROI and help marketers more profitably allocate media budgets across available online options,” says Smith.

ClearSaleing and Vetra will publish the general American Attribution Index (AAI) on a quarterly basis using a widget application. They will also publish relevant attribution management news and items of interest along with the Indices. Subscriptions will be available beginning in the 4th quarter to select industry versions of the AAI, where the subscription will provide an initial set of indices and quarterly updates thereafter. Having regular, ongoing access to the AAI is critical as the indices are dynamic due to several key factors: (1) the continual addition of more and more data from the new companies who join the AAI membership, (2) changes that occur in macroeconomic environmental factors, and (3) changes that occur in media options and measurement technology.

ClearSaleing and Vetra would like to encourage advertisers to become members of the AAI group and are offering special charter member subscription rates through October 31, 2009. The more advertisers that participate in the AAI from select verticals, the more accurate and beneficial the AAI becomes over time.

ClearSaleing Attribution Management Platform
ClearSaleing’s attribution management platform technology allows marketers to design and input their own attribution management model to fit their industry’s needs, precisely mapping the Purchase PathTM from a customer’s first action to their conversion and attributing a relative value to each marketing element along the way that contributed to that conversion. Company representatives will be providing demonstrations of ClearSaleing’s attribution management platform at the ClearSaleing booth, # 822 throughout the conference.

Vertical marketers in Financial Services, Insurance, Professional Services, Travel, Pharmaceutical, Automotive and Retail industries can use ClearSaleing’s customized attribution feature to assign a value of relative influence for each ad, ad source, or organic referrer that contributes to a purchase. For example, one ClearSaleing client is tying applicant credit scores from online loan applications to the ads that drove the application in the first place. ClearSaleing’s ability to integrate all of this standalone data makes these types of measurements and insights possible.

“It is the natural evolution in our development of the industry-leading attribution management platform that allows marketers to see each and every ad that influences a conversion and attribute an accurate ROI and profit value to each ad,” adds Smith.

Leading interactive agencies such as Range Online Media, an iProspect company, are incorporating ClearSaleing’s attribution management platform into their client service portfolio. “We have been working with our clients to track campaign investments through attribution modeling for over two years, and are excited to see enhancements of this kind in the industry. It’s a critical element to helping us create what we call Accountable Brand Advertising. With attribution tools of this kind in our arsenal, we have the ability to create and measure more profitable and growing campaigns utilizing the proper mix of activities across the entire customer conversation – not just the last ad,” says Dustin Engel, Vice President, Strategy and Media, Range Online Media.

Advertisers using ClearSaleing’s advertising analytics and attribution management technology include American Greetings, OfficeMax, Goodyear Tire Company, Allegro Medical, Harry & David, Stanley Steemer, Nationwide Insurance, Safe Auto and many others.

Beyond the Last Click
ClearSaleing eliminates the “last click” way of thinking that leads to faulty investment decisions. Through its cross-media profit tracking, Purchase Path attribution technology, easy-to-use UI and comprehensive report library, ClearSaleing is able to uncover and track rich, detailed, and complex consumer behavior that is required to accurately measure and optimize advertising investment performance–unlike the limited and inadequate “last click” method.

While other vendors may say that they provide attribution management solutions or that they calculate ROI, ClearSaleing actually delivers. Unlike others, ClearSaleing integrates with a marketer’s back-end system to provide accurate profit calculations that account for cost of goods sold and shipping costs, in addition to advertising costs and ClearSaleing’s own fees. This means that ClearSaleing’s profit reports are actually accurate for each sale, each product sold, each ad source, each campaign and even each individual ad.

About Vetra Analytics
Vetra Analytics is a marketing analytics consulting firm that specializes in analytics R&D, dashboards and customer data-based models. Created by Dr. Purush Papatla, Ph.D., the Vetra team brings years of global consulting and publishing experience to its clients. With this leadership, Vetra has the ability to dig deep into your data repositories and locate key insights that can optimize your marketing decisions, enhance your customer satisfaction and increase ROI on marketing efforts. For more information, please visit www.VetraAnalytics.com.

About ClearSaleing
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’s technology enables attribution management through its patent-pending Purchase Path technology. Purchase Path accurately attributes profit (ROI) across the multiple marketing touch points that contribute to and influence a sale.

ClearSaleing is a thought leader in the growing scientific field of attribution management and founder of the Attribution Management Forum, the profession’s e-community for interactive marketers. The Company also publishes AttributinManagement.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. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, please visit www.ClearSaleing.com.