Media Attribution: Why Aren’t You Screaming?
If online revenue doesn’t add up, as in 1 + 1 = 3, you would think that most companies would be screaming…but in reality, most have no idea.
It’s a scary situation and before we get to the cause, let’s first do this: To discover if you have this problem at your company, add up all the revenue or actions from your different sources (search, display, email, affiliate, organic, etc.) for the month…if they exceed the actual revenue or actual number of actions for the month, then you’ve got a problem.
When you add your respective channels plus organic, they should equal your total from the confirmation page.
Yes, 100% from the sum of all your online channels plus organic should equal 100% from your confirmation page.
But if it doesn’t, it’s likely because of outdated Last Click Attribution measurement combined with each channel firing their respective pixel, claiming entire credit for a transaction vs. attributed credit.
Last Click Attribution = Bad
Last Click Attribution: In an e-commerce world where multiple Internet ads contribute to the purchase path of an online transaction, sadly, most Internet measurements give 100% of transaction credit to the very last ad seen or clicked before the transaction.
So if four Internet ads contributed to a transaction, in today’s world, most systems allocate entire credit to the fourth and last ad–ignoring the first three which actually drove the revenue. Plus, each Internet ad likely fires their respective pixel…amounting to 4X the actual amount of transactions and revenue.
And in the $30 billion U.S. Internet ad market, this leads to millions of dollars of waste. We’re just now realizing the problem, and seeing solutions.
Full Funnel Attribution = Good
Some smarter attribution companies provide ‘full funnel’ attribution, giving credit to a team of Internet ads, instead of just the ‘last clicked’ ad.
Some people call this method of splitting and attributing revenue & transaction credit ‘fractional’ attribution. In C3’s system, we capture all sources from the top of the funnel to the very bottom of the funnel in every transaction and then attribute credit to a team of ads we call the Originators, Assists, and Converters.
After credit is attributed to the team (Originators, Assists, and Converters) causing the transaction…when you add them back together—it’s got to total 100%.
Remember, it’s all got to add up.
That’s the very first step in understanding full funnel attribution.
Bottom Line
C3 has saved more than $5 million in profit for one client within 12 months of use. Expect 36% + improvement in online media ROI within three months of utilizing the C3 Metrics decision engine.
