AdExchanger: With Originators, Assists, and Converters, C3 Metrics Targeting Attribution

C3 Metrics CEO Mark Hughes is interviewed by AdExchanger in With Originators, Assists, and Converters, C3 Metrics Targeting Attribution Says CEO Hughes

AdExchanger.com: What are some of the key learnings that you had as VP of Marketing at Half.com (sold to eBay for $300 million in 2000), that have come in handy at C3 Metrics?
Both eBay and half.com embraced a data-driven culture for media buying and customer acquisition. Sometimes it was a pressure cooker, but pressure makes diamonds.

What problem is C3 metrics solving?
Today’s ad tracking systems are predominantly the same legacy systems from the late ‘90s…giving 100% conversion credit to the last-click or last-view.

Example: if four Internet ads contribute to a transaction, current tracking systems allocate entire credit to the very last ad, completely ignoring the first three…even though they drove your revenue.

Zero credit to revenue drivers…100% credit to the last ad. It’s frightening.

C3 solves this problem with a SaaS attribution model, collecting and attributing credit to media sources as Originators, Assists, and Converters–transaction-by-transaction, in real-time.

The elegance of C3 is its decision engine…taking thousands of transactions, and making the complex simple and actionable. Instead of grueling weeks of analysis, using C3’s decision engine, it takes minutes.

Where does C3 fit – and how does it differentiate?
We’re rifle focused on attribution model analytics, it’s our passion and expertise. C3 is designed by media buyers and technologists who know media.

We differentiate in four major areas.

a) Platform agnostic & independent. You’ll find a lot of attribution model providers only work if you use a certain ad serving platform. Will you have to switch? What about affiliate channels? And what about Social, which doesn’t go through an ad server? What about offline DR data, which doesn’t go through ad servers? C3 accepts any media channel and was designed with universal acceptance from the beginning.

b) No Touchpoint Limitations. You’ll also find attribution model providers that have capture limits of the 10 most recent touchpoints, and will only attribute those 10 recent events—nothing further. But if you’ve got a handful of clicks and half a day’s worth of view impressions…you’d only be using two days of data for attribution, which is crazy. C3 has unlimited touchpoints.

c) Display expertise. This is perhaps the hardest aspect of an attribution model, yet the most important. We’ve cracked the code, and attribute view impressions and click impressions in real-time. Now as display becomes more RTB, and as less people click on banners each year, display attribution becomes paramount. We spent six months getting certified by Yahoo!, and today we run on 20+ networks. We view networks as partners because they want campaigns to work just as much as advertisers—but unless you have a decision engine with simple and actionable metrics to see what’s really going on, display is very hard.

d) Decision engine. We have a proprietary decision engine making the complex very simple and actionable. We’ve seen attribution model systems which are data dumping grounds, but we know how the real world works. Boss calls at 2pm saying $125k has to be cut…need the plan in three hours. This is real world and C3 is designed for the real world, combining robust power with simplicity.

We have 16 total advantages on our site, but these are C3’s prime differentiators.

Some say the “view-through” conversions are invalid considering the many variables that lead to a final conversion. Where does C3 stand?
That’s like saying TV doesn’t work. Of course TV works, but not all TV works. Terrible creative gives terrible results. Terrible targeting gives terrible results.

Of course view-through conversions work—but not all, and C3 is the robust tool to finally uncover which are working and which aren’t working. And from an actionability standpoint, scale the good, and reduce or remove the bad.

Some attribution systems shy away from solving this hard problem, but C3 has cracked the code incorporating view-throughs into our attribution model–most importantly doing it in real-time, so we can provide that data feedback to the networks.

Old ad tracking systems have trained the networks to play at the bottom of the funnel because that’s where these outdated systems give 100% credit.

Once you’re liberated from being stuck at the bottom with last click & last view, it allows dollars to be spent to originate and assist incremental revenue vs. competing for consumers already in the funnel.

It’s the only industry I know of where people compete for last place.

Read the entire interview at AdExchanger