If you were to poll marketing professionals about the industry’s most important advances in recent years, you would find a common theme in those responses: attribution models have had important breakthroughs. Attribution models assign credit to touchpoints along the buyer’s journey that eventually culminates in conversion.
Several attribution models are available to businesses like yours. Each of the models is useful for highlighting specific touchpoints for analysis. This is your look at the different marketing attribution models available to your business.
Linear Attribution
The linear approach to attribution is sometimes referred to as equal attribution. Such models equally credit touchpoints throughout marketing campaigns assuming each played an equal role in eventual conversion.
The linear attribution model is the optimal method of analysis for businesses that view the buyer journey to conversion as a process. This marketing attribution model ultimately stresses that each touchpoint or event in the marketing campaign contributes to convincing the viewer to take action.
The downside to linear attribution is that it does not account for the variances in channel efficacy or alterations in volume such as retargeting.
Consider the Element of Time
Put yourself in the position of a viewer who sees an ad for your company on CTV or through another medium. You take in the ad, continue to think about it throughout the days ahead and see another ad from the same company several days later.
Fast forward another couple days and the company’s marketing material crosses before your eyes once again. You visit the business’s website, read a couple of the company’s blog posts and then check out its social media pages.
The marketing event that occurs closest to the point of conversion is given the bulk of the attribution for the sale. In the example above, it is the online visitor’s reading of the company’s social media content that receives the bulk of the credit for conversion.
The marketing events that occurred early in the buyer’s journey, meaning the initial CTV ad in the example above, are not credited nearly as much. Those initial events are important yet valued less as they didn’t push the viewer toward the tipping point for conversion.
However, the time-based approach, also known as the time-decay model, can also be flipped with the business emphasizing the initial touchpoints instead of the final touchpoints. A business with a short sales cycle is likely to prefer the time-decay model as it recognizes that touchpoint value has the potential to be unequal and even diminish.
The only potential downside to time-decay attribution is that it does not account for the efficacy of individual channels throughout the buyer journey.
Last Touchpoint Attribution
Plenty of businesses view the final touchpoint as the deciding factor in whether someone converts from a viewer into a buyer. This model reflects the fact that the final marketing event that occurs prior to conversion is often the most important.
The last touchpoint or last click attribution model is revered for its directness. The last touchpoint is the easiest to track, making it easy to quantify for analysis. Moreover, businesses often favor the last touchpoint attribution model as it is built into most web analytics tools for quick and easy application.
Position-based Attribution
Position-based attribution is highly unique, applying 40% of attribution to the first and final touchpoints. The last 20% is distributed to the touchpoints that buyers progress through in between the initial point of contact and the final marketing event before conversion.
If the percentages above are too rigid for your business, don’t fret. You can still obtain value from the position-based attribution model with manual adjustments to reflect your company’s business model. Customize your position-based attribution model as desired and you’ll find it provides valuable insight.
Attribution With Algorithms
The algorithmic attribution model emerged later than the models described above yet it is considered just as effective, if not more so, than others. The algorithmic attribution model attributes a percentage of credit for conversions to touchpoints in accordance with efficacy. The model is considered advanced in that it is powered by advanced technology including machine learning.
Opt for the algorithmic approach to CTV attribution and you’ll find it employs advanced statistical modeling along with complex inferential logic to customize the model in accordance with results. The primary benefit of attribution through algorithms is the fact that it is data-centric, meaning more objectivity in your results. The algorithmic model ultimately serves as a consolidated view of the buyer journey incorporating relevant information while allowing for adjustment to external forces.
