What is an Example of Attribution?

Digital marketers use marketing attribution to capture data about the effectiveness of their overall marketing campaigns and how each individual piece contributed to the larger performance.

Marketers looking for examples of attribution are genuinely seeking out the common, and not so common, attribution methods that determine the strategy for applying value to individual marketing touchpoints within a larger, multi-media campaign. Let’s break down the basics of attribution and take a look at some examples of this core digital marketing concept at work.

What is attribution in digital marketing?

Attribution in digital marketing has become the defining term for an entire data-driven science that marketers use to determine how every single component of their multi-media digital marketing campaign contributed to every single conversion. In other words, attribution is the discipline of correctly identifying the digital marketing tactics, or “touches,” that were responsible for converting a lead.

What is an example of attribution?

The types of attribution that are most commonly used can generally be broken down into 5 attribution models or methods. Let’s take a look at each of them and share a real-world example of what it might look like in action.

First click:

Attributing credit is based on the first exposure in a successful series of events that leads to a conversion.

Strength: Analyzes the attraction performance of your awareness exposures

Flaw: First exposure credit attribution fails to capture metrics on its contribution within the overall picture.

Example: A user sees a banner ad on a website for sunglasses. They click through, agree to sign up for a newsletter in exchange for a discount, then shop around before leaving. A week later, they receive an email, which reminds them about the product, and they make a purchase. The first banner ad receives 100% of the credit for the sale.

Last click:

Reversing the strategy of first-click attribution, last click involves giving credit solely to the very last exposure before a visitor clicked and completed a purchase or contact/ inquiry form.

Strength: Because last click is the most basic attribution models that provide finite contributions to a conversion, it’s often the default setting for attribution data collection tools.

Flaw: Credit only goes to one single touchpoint within a larger, multi-touchpoint marketing campaign, which does not tell the picture of it’s ultimate impact of the user’s journey to conversion.

Example: A user sees a banner ad on a website for sunglasses. They click through, agree to sign up for a newsletter in exchange for a discount, then shop around before leaving. A week later, they receive an email, which reminds them about the product, and they make a purchase after clicking on a link in the email. The email receives 100% of the credit for the sale.

Linear:

This one is sometimes called uniform, and it applies credit to any and all exposures and touchpoints that contributed to a user’s journey to conversion.

Strength: Attributes credit to all exposures in a given channel that was ultimately responsible for a conversion, ensuring that all exposures are taken into account

Flaw: Credit is attributed in a blanket fashion, disregarding the overall contribution or weight each touchpoint individually has.

Example: A user sees a banner ad on a website for sunglasses. They click through, agree to sign up for a newsletter in exchange for a discount, then shop around before leaving. A week later, they receive an email, which reminds them about the product, and they make a purchase. The banner ad and the email each receive 50% of the credit for the sale.

Weighted:

Marketers who are keen to get cozy with their marketing plan and develop an in-depth view at the performance of each exposure individually and its weighted contribution to each conversion.

Strength: Weighted attribution models can provide businesses with an in-depth, personalized logic to apply credit to each exposure and interaction, gathering a large overhead view of metrics that can be hyper-focused to each touchpoint and its overall performance.

Flaw: Requires special attention from marketers to develop and apply a system of attributing credit based on a set of business goals and needs

Example: A user sees a banner ad on a website for sunglasses. They click through, agree to sign up for a newsletter in exchange for a discount, then shop around before leaving. A week later, they receive an email, which reminds them about the product, and they make a purchase. The sunglasses company knows that their banner ads are responsible for 80% of their newsletter signups, and that this customer would not have even seen the email without the banner ad. Therefore, the banner ad gets 75% of the credit, with the email only receiving 25%.

Time-decay:

Because some marketing plans may take place over a lengthy period of time, marketers use time-decay attribution models to attribute credit to more recent touchpoints and weaken credit applied to exposures the farther away they are to the success or failure of the overall goal.

Strength: Enables marketers to keep a close eye on the recent interactions that sparked the buyer’s overall decision to purchase or complete a form

Flaw: Time-decay methods often fail to adequately paint an entire journey that a user has taken within a marketing campaign’s many touchpoints. This includes failing to capture any awareness exposures that may have contributed to a later Google search or direct entryway to a landing page.

Example: A user sees a banner ad on a website for sunglasses. They click through, agree to sign up for a newsletter in exchange for a discount, then shop around before leaving. A week later, they receive an email, which reminds them about the product, and they make a purchase. The email receives 75% of the credit because it was the most recent touch, leaving the banner ad only 25% of the credit.

Use Attribution to qualify your marketing efforts

Boosting your future marketing efforts starts by capturing data around your past and current campaigns and analyzing the performance of each individual advertisement, video, email, Google sponsored content, and other touchpoints.

DemandJump’s Marketing Attribution can show you exactly what touchpoints contributed to a conversion, allowing you to make more informed decisions about what methods and content your users prefer to engage with. Grab time on our calendar for a  demo to see how you can finally close the loop on your marketing efforts.