Experience Matters
Our leadership brings experience from some of the most recognizable brands, including Nielsen, eBay, PepsiCo and DoubleClick
John Dimling
Fmr. Nielsen CEO & Advisor
Mark Hughes
CEO & Co-Founder
Jeff Greenfield
COO & Co-Founder
Jeffrey Silverman
Fmr. DoubleClick Executive & Advisor
Company History
C3’s founders created “Hottest Mom in America” on behalf of a pharmaceutical company facing an oncoming competitor who was 10x larger. Thousands showed up to audition for the series that later spawned the instantly popular “Real Housewives” TV show. The advertiser grabbed attention from the Wall Street Journal, to Entertainment Tonight; analyst coverage expanded, the consumer funnel expanded, and stock price rose.
A year later, Greenfield and Hughes found themselves trying to accurately measure the impact of the events which caused the ripple effect for the advertiser. This quest formed the early genesis of C3 Metrics.
Kimberly-Clark (the make of Huggies and Kleenex) created the ultimate dust mask from combining the breathable elements in their diapers to their experience in the medical field. So advanced, Kimberly-Clark’s DIY division had the enviable end-cap position in all 1,800 Home Depot’s across America. The problem: Home Depot was threatening to remove them from the end caps because they didn’t have the sales pull-through. The company turned to C3’s Founders who orchestrated an online & offline campaign called ‘Duckbill’.
Leading the division’s 30% growth, Hughes and Greenfield realized measurement is the key to success for every marketing team.
After rolling out initial tests of their beta platform in 2008, Hughes and Greenfield compile and publish results of the longest running study on multi-touch attribution.
Deploying the insights of full funnel attribution algorithms increased revenue 75% versus baseline with only a 12% increase in media spend. During this two-year time frame, there were no significant offline media events, changes to the advertiser’s website, and prior to baseline, revenue run rate amounted to low single digits.
The only significant change was the agency relying on the C3’s proprietary AVSR metric to guide their media buying decisions and optimizing weekly with C3’s AVSR metric at granular levels. All paid media channels saw a sharp increase in revenue with display transforming the most from unprofitable status to the largest ROI gainer.
With more than 50% of digital ads never seen, C3’s introduction of the Viewable Conversion metric was one of the most significant advancements towards better digital measurement. As the first (& only) Attribution platform to integrate impression-level viewability, Viewable Conversions meant that only digital ads which are seen were eligible for credit.
With an emphasis on impressions which truly have an impact, C3 Metrics research has demonstrated that up to 44% of all online conversions start with programmatic display.
Former Nielsen Media Research CEO John Dimling joins to oversee the firm’s integration of TV attribution with its current online media model. In his role, Dimling is tasked with rolling out C3’s integrated model, to help brands and agencies better understand the impact offline advertising has on influencing online conversion decisions.
Dimling joined Nielsen in 1985 to introduce the Peoplemeter service to its TV ratings business, and he later served as President and CEO of Nielsen Media Research, Chairman of the Board of NetRatings (Nielsen Online), and interim Chairman of Nielsen Entertainment. He was previously Executive Director and CEO of the Electronic Media Rating Council (MRC), and he held positions with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the Board of the Advertising Research Foundation.
With the majority of digital and offline conversions traversing multiple devices, it’s the Upper Funnel or Awareness campaigns which show poor performance in standard measurement. In 2012, C3 Metrics became the first attribution platform to develop a proprietary probabilistic methodology for tracking users anonymously across their different devices. Unique to C3’s approach is keeping each advertisers first-party data safe and separated from each other.
The final attribution result is a path which represents the user, all of their devices and all of the tactics, strategies and partners which truly impacted the conversion.
When everything ad-related is happening in real-time, it’s easy to lose track of where a sale actually started. In a funnel, brand awareness happens at the top, whereas the “lower funnel” is home to the point of sale. While the sale will always be important, big brands need to focus on the “upper funnel” in order to survive.
Upper Funnel Conversions determine the media responsible for driving true brand lift and awareness while enabling real-time digital signals at the top of the funnel. The Upper Funnel Conversion report introduces new technology which turns the digital funnel around for brands.
Of the many ways ad agencies and research firms pitch themselves, actually buying ads in the media they use or measure for clients is rare — particularly TV. But in a possibly unprecedented example of a marketing-services firm putting its money where its mouth is — or vice versa — analytics firm C3 Metrics is running direct-response TV ads on entertainment and sports programming and winning attention from clients and new business as a result.
“We have clients spending up to $100 million a year on TV able to optimize down to a spot level,” Mr. Greenfield said. “So we thought if this is working for them, there’s got to be a way to make it work for us, even if our audience is much smaller. TV is still in our minds the most powerful medium out there.”
Clients across multiple industries took the stage to share their attributions wins, detail cutting-edge technical integrations and review their own internal attribution best practices.
Highlights included an electrifying keynote from a VP of Analytics explaining how his own pessimism led the team down the path of fully operationalizing attribution throughout their entire organization.
Held at the historic Music Hall in beautiful downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Results after deployment of the new machine-learning algorithm result in a 15-44% ROI improvement across the board for clients. Incorporating the most advanced data validation routines including cross-device and real-time viewability credit is determined algorithmically by analyzing 100% of the data, including converting and non-converting paths down to the keyword level with an emphasis on media delivering results in the fastest time.
This approach differs from traditional attribution methodologies which rely on human bias to predetermine how credit will be allocated. Developed in conjunction with the former Chairman and CEO of Nielsen, the end result is an objective representation of what is working or not in cross-channel advertising campaigns, and one that accurately reflects the interplay and real performance of all the touchpoints across paid, owned and earned media.
Traditional marketers relying heavily on direct mail were unable to prove the value of direct mail due to limited cross-channel measurement options. In addition, direct mail fails to be added to many plans due to lack of measurement within traditional digital measurement platforms.
C3 Metrics details their algorithmic approach to integrating Direct Mail directly with both prospecting and CRM Direct Mail with the ability to attribute value at the user level.
Attribution After Dark, presented by C3 Metrics, is the only nationwide tour of top advertising experts addressing challenges which impact marketers on a daily basis.
Key topics include programmatic fraud, cross-channel measurement, connection online media to offline sales and multi-touch attribution.
2017 cites include Dallas, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Each event is followed by an after-party including an open bar, food, networking in one of the hottest spots in the city.
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