Ebook definitive guide to attribution final

The Definitive Guide to
Data-Driven Attribution
STEPS FOR GETTING STARTED WITH DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION

CONTENTS
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION 2
Contents
Introduction 3
What is Attribution? 5
Would We Benefit from Data-Driven Attribution? 7
How Does Data-Driven Attribution Fit into My Analytics Toolset? 9
What Questions Does Data-Driven Attribution Answer? 14
Five Steps to Your Data-Driven Attribution Strategy 17
Step 1: Define Goals 19
Step 2: Justify Budget 22
Step 3: Be Selective 27
Step 4: Get Prepared 34
Step 5: Evaluate Success 38
Conclusion 41
Glossary 43

Introduction
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION

INTRODUCTION
Introduction
Data-driven attribution helps marketers know more and guess less. If your organization is still focused on crediting only
the last touch point for your marketing success, you may be leaving up to 20%-40% of potential ROI improvement on
the table.
Data-driven attribution offers an unprecedented level of visibility into the customer journey, enabling marketers to make
fact-based decisions, gain efficiencies and realize greater returns on marketing investments.
In this guide, you will find an extensive introduction to data-driven attribution so that you can better understand how
and if a solution can help you move your marketing forward. In addition to understanding the questions that attribution
can help your organization answer, you will learn if it is a fit for your business. Lastly, you will be left with tips and tricks
for how to move forward with a data-driven attribution program.
Opportunities for Growth
Top-performing marketing
organizations are five times more
likely to use advanced attribution.
By contrast, 54% of
marketer still credit
the last-click, only.
Source:
The State of Marketing 2013, IBM’s Global Survey
of Marketers. Global Summit 2013, n.d. Web.
5x
54%
20-30%
10-20%
20-40%
25-50%
25-50%
5x
54%
20-30%
10-20%
20-40%
25-50%
25-50%
5x
54%
20-30%
10-20%
20-40%
25-50%
25-50%
5x
54%
20-30%
10-20%
20-40%
25-50%
25-50%
5x
54%
20-30%
10-20%
20-40%
25-50%
25-50%
5x
54%
20-30%
10-20%
20-40%
25-50%
25-50%
5x
54%
20-30%
10-20%
20-40%
25-50%
25-50%
Decrease in effective display
and retargeting CPA.
Increase in optimization
within channels including PPC,
Affiliate, Email, and Social.
Increase in performance
across channels.
Decrease in level of effort to
pull, aggregate, and distribute
cross-channel reporting.
Increase in overall marketing
investment performance.

What is Attribution?
Summary
Assumptions about how your marketing activities impact your
customers lead to a misinformed marketing strategy. Data-driven
attribution reveals the real path-to-purchase, allowing you to fine-
tune strategies based on real customer behavior.

WHAT IS ATTRIBUTION?
What Is Attribution?
Attribution is the practice of tracking and valuing all
marketing touch points that lead to a desired outcome.
Data-driven attribution employs a powerful combination
of predictive algorithms and integrated analytics to
reveal — and properly credit — every bit of marketing
spend that contributes to conversion.
THE MODEL MATTERS
Not all attribution models are created equal. Simple or
“rules-based” methodologies assign credit according to a
pre-defined formula.
1. Single-Touch: Assigns 100% credit to one touch
point — usually the first or last touch.
2. Even: Assigns equal credit to all touch points on the
path — if 4 exist, each gets 25%.
3. Custom: Assigns arbitrary credit to each touch
point — the first is the “introducer,” the last is the
“closer” and intervening points are “promoters.”
Introducers and closers often get outsized credit,
while promoters divide the rest without regard to
order of exposure or creative assets used.
While simple attribution models offer general answers
across a basic marketing mix, today’s cross-channel
marketers may want a more scientific approach to drive
the results they need.
RULES WERE MADE TO BE BROKEN
Because credit is dictated from the top-down, rules-
based attribution models obscure the real value of each
touch point. By contrast, data-driven attribution models
determine the importance of each touch point as data
accumulates “from the bottom-up.”
In this case, sophisticated algorithms to determine which
touch points are the most influential. By comparing each
conversion path, factors such as the number of touch
points in the sequence, the order of exposure and the
creative assets used are all factored into results.
LAST TOUCH
FIRST TOUCH
RULES BASED MODELS
EVEN
CUSTOM
1
1
2
3 Next Up: Having defined data-driven attribution, the next question is whether
your organization is ready to embrace this data-intensive practice. Looking at your
organizational and data maturity can yield the answer.

Would We Benefit from
Data-Driven Attribution?
Summary
Look at your marketing mix and resulting data to determine your
organization’s readiness for data-driven attribution. Some solutions
require volumes of high quality data — and an organizational
appetite to operationalize attribution insights.

WOULD WE BENEFIT FROM DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION?
Would We Benefit from
Data-Driven Attribution?
Data-driven attribution is an intensive data-modeling exercise in which complex algorithms find and analyze statistically
relevant patterns across volumes of quality data. Not all organizations have the level of data maturity required to benefit
from a stand-alone enterprise level data-driven attribution solution.
LOW DATA MATURITY
Full cross-channel data-driven attribution may not be
a fit for organizations that have lower levels of data
maturity due to having little data or low data quality.
Low Data. Organizations that do little measurable
marketing, leverage few channels and as a result,
have little or no data are usually unable to use data-
driven attribution.
Disorganized Data. On the other hand, marketers who
pursue many channels with non-standardized goals and
objectives (generally in the form of mismatching KPIs)
may struggle to derive actionable insights.
HIGH DATA MATURITY
Data-driven attribution benefits organizations with high
data maturity with large data volumes and high data
quality across their channel mix.
Focused Data. Organizations with ready access to
high-volume, high-quality data are excellent data-driven
attribution candidates. Many “digital native” organizations
focus all marketing efforts in digital channels, allowing
relatively easy access to data.
Organized Data. Organizations with a complex online
and offline marketing mix, that can access volumes of
high-quality data across all channels and that have the
people and processes needed to access data and take
action, are the best candidates for data-driven attribution.
Next Up: If your organization is ready for data-driven attribution, chances are you
have a wide range of analytics tools to measure and manage the customer lifecycle.
Gaining support for data-driven attribution means understanding where it fits within
that toolset. Let’s take a look.
If your complex marketing mix includes both online
and offline channels, your data-driven attribution
solution must be able to handle a wide variety of
data sources and volumes, including the ability
to integrate with next-generation marketing mix
modeling for a more holistic view.
HIGH QUALITY
LOW QUALITY
LOW
VOLUME
HIGH
VOLUME
FOCUSED DATA
OR
FOCUSED
MARKETER
SYSTEMATIC DATA
OR
SYSTEMATIC
MARKETER
LOW DATA
OR
SIMPLE
MARKETER
CHAOTIC DATA
OR
DISORGANIZED
MARKETER
HIGH QUALITY
LOW QUALITY
LOWVOLUME
HIGHVOLUME
Focused
Data
Systematic
Data
Low
Data
Chaotic
Data
Pro Tip

How Does Data-driven Attribution
Fit Into My Analytics Toolset?
Summary
To build momentum towards a new attribution strategy, ensure
that all key stakeholders understand the purpose and limitations of
all analytics tools — and how data-driven attribution can unify and
complete marketing performance measurement.

HOW DOES DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION FIT INTO MY ANALYTICS TOOLSET?
D
RIVE
O
PTIM
IZE
REPEAT
6
5
4
3
21
TARG
ET
PLAN
MESSAGING
ENGAGE WITH
BRAND
BUY
REACH
CONSUMER
DATA-DRIVEN
ATTRIBUTION
7
The Analytics Toolset
Marketing mix modeling
Real-Time Bidding (RTB) and
Demand-Side Platforms (DSP)
Ad servers and search
management systems
Website Analytics
Customer Relationship
Management (CRM)
Cross-Channel Campaign
Management (CCCM)
Data Management
Platforms (DMPS)
Advertising Agency
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

How Does Data-driven
Attribution Fit into My
Analytics Toolset?
You can sit in a lawn chair to watch the big game on your
TV — but isn’t your recliner better suited to the task?
While a number of measurement tools help you assess
and track the customer lifecycle, it is important to use the
right tool for each job and to recognize the limits of each.
Data-driven attribution creates a “single source of
truth” about marketing performance that unifies and
completes your analytics toolset. While other tools
provide specific insights, data-driven attribution provides
an overall view of marketing performance. Let’s explore
the marketing analytics landscape and where attribution
fits into the mix.
1. MARKETING MIX MODELING (MMM):
You’ve run your campaign and it’s time to re-assess
the big picture. Do you need MMM or data-driven
attribution? The answer is both. Attribution allows you
to understand your marketing down to the user-level,
accurately measuring the impact of each touch points
and tactic. MMM on the other hand helps you look
across all your marketing influences at an aggregate
level, including factors like competition and comparing
against your “business as usual”. To create the best
possible plan, make sure data-driven attribution insights
are used to inform MMM activities.
Bottom Line: MMM helps you plan and optimize at the
highest levels while Attribution shows how to improve more
granularly. For the best marketing intelligence, use next-
generation MMM and data-driven attribution in concert.
2. REAL-TIME BIDDING (RTB)
AND DEMAND-SIDE PLATFORMS (DSP)
How will your campaign reach highly targeted audiences
across a variety of publishers? Programmatic buying
platforms may be the answer. Based on conversion
data, RTBs and DSPs constantly improve placement
targeting. Keep in mind that since their revenues are tied
to placement volumes, RTBs and DSPs have a vested
interest in high attribution credit for their placements.
Because they only measure the media they place, they
end up over-crediting themselves for all conversions.
They do not have the ability to assess the full path-to-
purchase, nor can they accurately assess attribution
credit for the media they place.
Bottom Line: RTBs and DSPs have limited visibility and
cannot assess credit in an unbiased or fractional way.
Data-driven attribution can provide insights that real-
time bidding partners can use to buy top performing ad
placements.
3. AD SERVERS AND SEARCH
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Ensuring that your ads are managed and served
according to your media buy is the domain of ad servers
and search management systems. These tools not only
show you when and where an ad was shown, they also
measure the basic performance of each asset. As such,
an ad server can reveal which ads are performing best
— but only regarding portions of your campaign that
fall within the channel it manages. As they attempt to
distribute credit for all conversions to this single channel,
they can cause double-counting.
Learn more about incorporating marketing
mix modeling with data-driven attribution in
Adometry’s article about “The Evolution of
Marketing Mix Modeling”.
Resource

Bottom Line: While ad servers and search management
systems allow spot-checking within a channel, their focus
is too narrow to offer data-driven attribution.
4. WEBSITE ANALYTICS
Site Analytics is a critical tool for improving your
website and mobile apps. The measurement, collection,
analysis and reporting of on-site activities allow you
to understand user needs and fine-tune your site
to meet those needs. Website analytics typically
provide only a “last-touch” or rules-based view of
campaign performance as they measure only the clicks
immediately prior to a website visit. Upper-funnel touch
points (such as display and social) are going to be highly
disadvantaged when held to this analysis.
Bottom Line: Website analytics are a complement, not
a replacement, for data-driven attribution, which offers a
more comprehensive view of what brought users to your
website.
5. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT (CRM)
As customers roll in, your CRM is there to capture
transaction, contact and segment data, and that’s a good
thing. But, CRMs are primarily focused on customer
service and support, not marketing. Though CRMs can
track multiple channels, they look mainly at lower-funnel
activities, offering limited visibility into acquisition and
cross-channel marketing in “non-direct” channels such as
social, display or affiliate.
Bottom Line: CRM data is an input that can feed your
data-driven attribution solution to yield a more complete
picture of customer behavior.
6. CROSS-CHANNEL CAMPAIGN
MANAGEMENT (CCCM)
CCCM systems are similar to CRMs, but with a greater
focus on marketing than on customer service. These
marketing databases contain contact information —
names, addresses, emails and SMS data — for both
customer and prospects. This aids you in determining
which audiences to target and where to find them. While
CCCMs may help with selection and execution, they are
unable to tell you how that audience responded, offering
little or no performance analytics.
Bottom Line: CCCM data is a valuable input for data-
driven attribution. Once attributed performance is
known, these insights can be fed back to your CCCM for
even better selection.
7. DATA MANAGEMENT PLATFORMS (DMPS)
DMPs are unified technology platforms that intake
disparate first, second, and third-party data sets, provide
normalization and segmentation on the data, and allow
marketers to push the resulting segmentation into
live interactive channel environments. While DMPs are
excellent data collection tools that can provide input
to data-driven attribution solutions, they do not in
themselves provide insights or recommendations to
marketers regarding optimal channel mix.
Bottom Line: Data-driven attribution solutions
complement DMPs. DMPs collect valuable segment data,
allowing attribution solutions to provide a deeper level of
actionable insights.

ADVERTISING AGENCIES
Let’s suppose you start with developing a creative
campaign and detailed targeting recommendations
designed to catch the eye of your audience — in addition
to all these tools. A good ad agency is an invaluable
asset, from recommending strategy, to creative
development, and on to tactical execution. Keep in
mind that an agency’s viewpoint is often limited to the
channels they manage, and includes a vested interest
in justifying their own value. While most agencies do
offer analytics — and some are even building in-house
attribution capabilities — they often lack the data,
machine learning and mathematical expertise to tackle
in-depth analysis.
Bottom Line: Augment your agency’s understanding
with third-party, data-driven attribution insights you
provide to inform, guide and inspire agency teams.
Next Up: To propel the organizational conversation about data-driven attribution,
let’s take a closer look at the questions that marketing performance management
platforms can answer.

What Questions Does Data-Driven
Attribution Answer?
Summary
Get ready to guess less and know more. Data-driven attribution
offers a range of unique benefits both within and across channels,
including the insights you need to make fact-based budget planning
and investment decisions.

WHAT QUESTIONS DOES DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION ANSWER?
What Questions Does Data-
driven Attribution Answer?
Data-driven attribution offers a clear, comprehensive
view of the customer journey. This clarity allows you
to both build better campaigns and optimize those
that are in-flight. Before implementing a solution, it is
important to both understand — and set stakeholder
expectations around — the three main benefits of data-
driven attribution.
1 Intra-Channel Performance. See exactly which
elements of your marketing programs are working
within each channel — to a high degree of granularity
— so you can identify top-performers and take
advantage of the best opportunities.
2 Cross-Channel Performance. Get clarity across
all channels, so you can compare performance and
correct both over and under-spending. Breaking
down silos allows your organization to unify
accountability and plan holistically to drive more
strategic marketing success.
3 Efficiency and Cohesion. Replace time-consuming
data comparison and report pulling with easy-to-
understand dashboards. This means that teams
across your organization can move faster and make
better decisions based on a cohesive set of actionable
insights. The best solutions can even push out real-
time insights to ensure cohesion with external partners
working on your behalf.
Data-driven attribution allows you to look back, forward
and act on-the-fly to improve marketing performance.
Marketers that leverage a full data-driven attribution
solution can measure benefits within and across
channels in these key areas of return.
INTRA-CHANNEL BENEFITS
• Brand Safety. Ensure that ads are not served on
negative websites or next to inappropriate or brand
damaging content.
• Viewability. Ensure that impressions are actually
viewed and not served off the viewable area of
the page.
• Monitoring. Ensure that geotargeting, pacing and
other campaign goals are being met.
• Frequency Capping. Ensure that the optimal daily
frequency caps are in place and operating properly.
• Geo and Time of Day. Ensure that audiences
are targeted geographically and at the right time
of day with the appropriate message based on
their responses.
• Creative Messaging and Placement. Identify best
and worst performing ads to ensure that the best
creative, messaging, sequencing, targeting and
placements are in the media plan.
• Overlap Reduction. Ensure that overlaps between
sites — that do not increase conversion — are
reduced to eliminate wasted ad spend and guard
against overexposure.
Wondering how to set your display budget? If
you learn that display offers a 30% lift to search
conversion rates, it makes sense to increase your
display budget. It could also inform an overall
marketing budget increase — increasing display
will generate more search traffic and give you more
overall reach.
To improve your in-flight campaign, do you invest
more in that top performing ad? If you’re saturated
with a publisher, it may be the the wrong move.
Data-driven attribution reveals the value of each
incremental dollar, so you can make fact-based
decisions. As a result you, you may decide to allocate
additional budget to email or search instead.
Budget
Planning
Optimization
Budget
Planning
Optimization

WHAT QUESTIONS DOES DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION ANSWER?
CROSS-CHANNEL BENEFITS
• Budget Planning. Data-driven attribution insights
allow you to have a clear understanding of the
contribution that each channel has on your end goal,
which can aid you in finding the optimal budget.
• Optimization. Non-linear modeling allows you to
tweak and improve the performance of in-flight
campaigns in a more holistic and accurate way.
• Impact Analysis. Lift and funnel stage reports provide
you with a view into how each channel is impacting
other channel’s performance to give you a full
understanding of the true value of each channel.
• Campaign Strategy. Evaluating creative and
placements across all channels will show you which
tactics within your campaigns are working and which
need to be tweaked so that you can reach consumers
with a consistent message.
EFFICIENCY AND COHESION BENEFITS
• Unified Metrics. By evaluating all channels through a
single system, you will start measuring all channels by a
common set of metrics that are based on the business
rather than by the individual channel which cuts down
on the time spent “translating” metrics across channels
for one view of performance.
• Unified Reporting. Similarly, by utilizing one system
for all reporting and metrics, it will cut down on the
time required to pull reporting from multiple systems
and minimize confusion across the organization as to
what actual results look like.
• Flexible Reporting. Data-driven attribution
platforms generally allow you to view reporting in a
number of different ways as well as export results
into your internal business intelligence tools so you
don’t have to scrutinize a “one-size fits all” report
but can instead spend the time improving your
campaigns based on findings.
• Ecosystem Integrations. Programmatic connectors
into the marketing ecosystem allow you to have
fractional attribution metrics pushed directly to RTB
partners for automatic optimization, cutting down on
the time you have to manually pass reporting back
and forth.
Now that we’ve explored the definition, uses and
benefits of how attribution fits into the space today,
we’re going to walk you through how you go about
selecting an attribution solution.
Next Up: Now that you’ve made your stakeholders aware of the purpose and
benefits of data-driven attribution, it’s time to get serious about selecting the right
solution for your organization. Let’s look at the 5-step selection process that will help
drive success with data-driven attribution.

Five Steps to Your Data-Driven
Attribution Strategy
Summary
Data-driven attribution offers a strategic viewpoint. Ensure that your
business goals are defined to connect marketing metrics back to
valuable business outcomes so that data-driven attribution will help
you drive business success.

FIVE STEPS TO YOUR DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION STRATEGY
Five Steps to Your Data-Driven Attribution Strategy
As with any emerging discipline, data-driven attribution solutions differ widely. To get the benefits of data-driven
attribution for your organization, you must ask the right questions, solidify the right budgets and motivate the right
resources. Here are five key steps you can take, right now.
“We like to help our clients
get away from channel-only
thinking. Bragging rights in the
form of “my channel gets more
than 50% credit” doesn’t help
increase sales in a vacuum.
The metrics must connect
back to business goals.”
- Paul Pellman, Head of Adometry, Google
Deﬁne Goals1
Justify Budget2
Be Selective3
Get Prepared4
Evaluate Success5
1
2
3
4
5

Step
Define Goals
Deﬁne Goals1
Justify Budget2
Be Selective3
Get Prepared4
1
2
3
4

Step 1: Define Goals
In order to choose the right measurement and
analytics tools for your business, consider your current
pain points and business goals. It isn’t enough to find
out how much ”credit” each channel deserves — you
must determine how attributed credit drives value for
the business.
Begin by determining the value all your marketing
activities must deliver for the business and prepare
to take a holistic view of data-driven changes you will
make to meet those goals. Once you do, you will be
able to determine marketing’s impact on revenue, and
therefore, formulate budgets that will yield high return
for the business.
Here are some of the questions you should answer
internally before beginning any data-driven attribution
selection process.
WHAT ARE YOUR OBJECTIVES AND MEASUREMENT
GOALS? DO THEY ALIGN ACROSS YOUR BUSINESS?
Data-driven attribution requires a common, unified
success metric, and knowledge of your long-term goals.
Define objectives and KPIs that align across channels
and departments. Attribution doesn’t work overnight
and it won’t work if various business units or channels
measure success differently.
WHAT ARE YOUR TACTICAL CONVERSION EVENTS?
Your attribution solution will credit touch points along
the way to your defined conversion events. If you are
doing any website optimization, you have probably
already thought about how to guide consumers to
specific actions on your site. Whether a sale, a content
download or a lead form submission, determine what
digital conversions you will “attribute” towards. Ensure
that these conversion events are agreed upon across
your organization and are the main goal across the
entire business (not just for a specific channel).
WHAT DOES MARKETING SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?
Now, let’s take your success events one step further
in order to understand what marketing will attempt
to accomplish for your company as a whole. If you are
accountable to help increase sales, is there a way to tie
revenue or margin to your website or digital elements?
Often, goals are not just about revenue — but they must
be something actionable.
Don’t succumb to “shiny new object syndrome” by
purchasing a solution just because of the buzz. Instead,
carefully examine the questions you’d like to answer,
clearly define success metrics based on facts and
ensure that your goals are in line with vendor abilities.
Is your goal to get more “likes” or to get more sales?
While Facebook likes may be a goal for your social
campaigns, the ultimate goal for your clothing
brand is to sell jeans. Avoid “soft” goals and focus on
finding a solution that allows you to see the lift social
provides to sales — regardless of likes.
Example
Adopting data-driven attribution strategies can
mean overhauling your internal measurement
mechanisms. Do not undertake this task without
clarifying and gaining consensus on business
objectives.
Pro Tip

Ready, Set, Go!
Once you’ve laid out your goals, you are ready to start
your data-driven attribution selection process. On
the road to a great solution, you will need to recruit
cross-company involvement. Don’t overwhelm your
team or other resources all at once. Taking on more
than your organization can handle could sabotage
your chance at success.
Alternatively, avoid the “we’re not there yet,” mentality.
Change isn’t easy, but you will never be ready if you
don’t take the plunge. The results are well worth the
effort but you have to take a leap!
With all of this in mind, think about what you’d like your
timeline to look like. Knowing that it will take time to
walk before you run, pick a provider that will act as a
long-term partner, and that shows potential for growth
in the future.
Bottom Line: Data-driven attribution offers a strategic
viewpoint to your marketing campaigns. Ensure that your
business goals are defined to connect marketing metrics
back to valuable business outcomes so that data-driven
attribution will help you drive business success.
Identify a strong program owner who can set and
manage stakeholder expectations throughout the
process, and who will be able to resolve roadblocks
to drive organizational success.
Pro Tip
“The optimizations we were
able to make paid off the
solution within a quarter.”
Drew McKenzie, Senior Manager,
Digital Media at Luxottica

Step
Justify Budget
Deﬁne Goals1
Justify Budget2
Be Selective3
Get Prepared4
Evaluate Success5
1
2
3
4
5

Step 2: Justify Budget
Attribution requires thinking outside the silo — and that
means finding the dollars to pay for the analytics that
break down those silos. Before engaging a provider,
set yourself up for success by earmarking a cross-
departmental budget.
Since the analytics portions of your budget may already
be allocated, guide the conversation by promoting the
benefits of data-driven attribution to key stakeholders.
The right solution will pay for itself by creating cross-
department efficiencies and increasing the return on
each marketing investment.
Bottom Line: To determine your budget threshold for
data-driven attribution, consider its overall value to the
business. Then, consider real-world returns of 5% - 15%.
A Real-World
Budgeting Exercise
Setting expectations around the potential results
of data-driven attribution is critical. Account for any
expense of your attribution program (whether external
or internal) with realistic analysis for your organization in
order to gain support for cross-departmental budgeting.
Let’s walk through a budgeting exercise that typifies
returns you can expect with data-driven attribution.
Though no two businesses are alike, and there is
no way to predict actual results, this outline — from
current cross-channel marketing budget distribution
to quantified results — offers realistic proportions. The
following low, average and high yields can help you
estimate your expected returns.
The Current Spend
In this simple example, we’ll assume Display, Search,
Email and Affiliate are the primary digital marketing
channels, with the following monthly spend, revenues
and conversions.
Channels and Current Spend
Allocation Per Month
CHANNEL SPEND
Display Impressions $375,000
Search Clicks $325,000
Emails Delivered $75,000
Affiliate $225,000
Online Spend $1MM
Current Digital Return
on Ad Spend (ROAS)
$2.50
Current Online Monthly
Conversions
345,366
Current Annual
Conversions
4.14MM
Current eCPA $2.90
Current Yearly Revenue $30MM
Total Yearly Spend $12MM

The Interest Level
Now, let’s go a step beyond current spends to consider your organization’s appetite for change. To estimate returns, you
must take into account how much action your organization will be willing to act upon data-driven attribution insights.
Often, organizations have a medium to high interest in results (interest must be fairly high to implement a solution)
but only a moderate ability to take action. For the purposes of this example, we’ll assume you can take action on some
recommendations — but by no means all of them — whether due to a lack of resources or the need to prove results
before acting.
Interest in Implementing Change and Resource Investment Level
FEATURE INTEREST
RESOURCE
INVESTMENT
ACTION TO TAKE
Brand Safety Medium Low
Make sure that ads are not being served on negative
category websites or next to inappropriate content
that can be brand damaging
Viewability Medium Medium
Ensure that impressions are actually being viewed
and not being served off page
Segment Optimization Medium Low
Ensure that the right segments are being targeted
within search, email, affiliate etc.
Frequency Capping Medium Medium
Ensure that the optimal daily frequency caps are
in place
Geo and Time of Day Medium Medium
Understand the core audience and their responses
to target them geographically and at the right time
of the day with the appropriate message
Creative Optimization High Medium
Use the right creative sequencing, targeting and ad
combination across channels
Overlap Reduction Medium Medium
If there is overlap between sites, campaigns or channels
that does not increase the conversion rate and is
negative, then reduce the offending combinations
Planning High Medium
Use attribution insights such as top and bottom
performers to plan out future campaigns
Optimization High Medium
Use non-linear optimization to tweak and improve
performance of in-flight campaigns

The ROI Results
Assuming that data-driven attribution recommendations yield 5% improvement on our low end and 15% on the
absolute high end of returns (based on your ability and willingness to make changes), here are the estimated results
you can expect. Industry standard assumptions suggest that returns on your digital attribution solution will typically be
10x the cost of the solution. As you can see, even low results in all categories offer savings that allow you to pay for your
data-driven attribution program.
BRAND
SAFETY
$0
$50,000
$100,000
$150,000
$200,000
$250,000
$300,000
$350,000
VIEWABILITY MONITORING FREQUENCY
CAPPING
GEO AND
TIME OF DAY
CREATIVE
OPTIMIZATION
OVERLAP
REDUCTION
PLANNING OPTIMIZATION
MIN AVG MAX
Yearly Savings Using Attribution

The ROI Over Time
Let’s take a step further to assume that as you are looking to do more than break even, you will take your savings
and re-invest in improved marketing strategies. In this case, reinvesting your savings using data-driven attribution
recommendations could yield millions in new revenue.
Bottom Line: Even minimum returns recover the costs of a data-driven attribution solution. In this light, justifying a
budget within existing marketing allocations may be easier than you think.
$0
$500,000
$1,000,000
$1,500,000
$2,000,000
$2,500,000
$3,000,000
$3,500,000
MINIMUM AVERAGE MAXIMUM
New Revenue with Reinvesting

Step
Be Selective
Deﬁne Goals1
Justify Budget2
Be Selective3
Get Prepared4
Evaluate Success5
1
2
3
4
5

Step 3: Be Selective
You have determined the need for a data-driven
attribution program and successfully set aside a budget
— but what solution will you pick? Which attribution
partner will allow you to glean maximum results?
To find out, evaluate potential partners against the
following key criteria. End-to-end considerations
can make or break your ability to implement and
operationalize attribution insights.
Ease of Implementation
Data-driven attribution requires a breadth and
volume of data. Therefore, ease of data gathering and
integration are critical considerations for success. At a
minimum, your solution must be able to integrate all
marketing event data (impressions, clicks, conversions)
as well as cost data. Many solutions add external and
dynamic data sets (seasonality, audience data, offline
conversion sets or dynamic bidding data) for even more
robust results.
Any solution that promises “quick and easy”
implementation should be vetted carefully. These
solutions may “simplify” by handling only a subset of
your data — or they may simply be telling you what you
want to hear.
To ensure that potential providers are grasping the
complexity of your marketing landscape be sure to
investigate the following questions.
CAN YOUR PARTNER HANDLE YOUR DATA?
Organizing your data will be a project in and of itself.
A good partner should also be able to provide flexible
options for collecting data. Ensure your methods match
what your partner can ingest. Pick a provider that can
guide you through the process of setting up, collecting
and transferring required data sets.
ARE THEY CERTIFIED ACROSS MULTIPLE PARTNERS
FOR DATA TRACKING AND INTEGRATION?
Data set flexibility is important, but it is just as important
to assess onboarding efficiencies with the industry’s
most commonly used marketing and advertising
platforms. If you are pursuing a tag collection method,
make sure that your provider is certified across the
industry’s leading media partners. Without a long history
of certification, new approvals may take time to obtain
— and that may be time you don’t have.
Even in the case of log file data collection, check for a list
of preferred and standardized partners and file types to
troubleshoot onboarding.
HOW WILL THE PROVIDER WORK WITH YOUR
VARIOUS PARTNERS, INCLUDING YOUR AGENCY?
Top marketers work with a variety of technology
partners and marketing management organizations.
Partner agencies or organizations may own various
components of your data (for example, one for display
data, another for search and so on).
To ensure complete and consistent evaluation of
potential data-driven attribution providers, see the
Vendor Evaluation Scorecard.
Learn more about Adometry’s flexible ability to
capture and gather data with a proprietary tag-and-
pixel approach or by leveraging existing ad server
log files.
Resource
Resource

While all players are critical to implementation, not all
are direct stakeholders. During onboarding, it may take
persistence, organization and relationship management
to get all parties to submit data in a timely manner.
Check that your provider has the skills and experience
to help you through this process.
Breadth of Services
How much support will your organization need to use and
interpret data-driven attribution insights? Your answers will
vary depending on the size of your organization and the
skill sets you have available in-house.
In addition to evaluating a provider’s technology, don’t
forget to assess the support you need versus what you
can expect from any given provider. Check that your
partner provides the right level of consultation, training
and direct access to experts to ensure you can leverage
attribution insights.
DOES THE PROVIDER OFFER A CONSULTATIVE
PARTNERSHIP?
Do you plan to analyze data-driven attribution outputs
yourself or do you want someone to provide insights
for you? Don’t forget to consider your needs during
onboarding as well as once implementation is complete.
Next, consider how much training you will need to
operationalize your organization’s use of data-driven
attribution. Will you want consistent support from a
resource who has learned your business or do you
prefer doing things on your own with occasional support
on request?
DOES THE PROVIDER PROVIDE DIRECT ACCESS
TO EXPERTS?
Seek a solution that offers the right balance between
self-serve insights and access to deep data and
marketing expertise. Evaluate the type and amount
of access your provider provides to their database
management, media and marketing planning, and
analytics experts. Even if you employ marketing analysts
in-house, data-intensive solutions require an expert
team of data scientists — resources that can offer
custom insights as opportunities arise.
Very sophisticated marketers still seek providers due
to the intense data expertise data-driven attribution
requires. Even with a brilliant in-house team, gaining
third-party perspective can be especially valuable in fine-
tuning marketing practices across your organization.
Best-in-Class Methodology
What is the basis of your provider’s attribution
crediting system and is it inline with your business
needs? Ask tough questions to find out how any
provider’s model works, how it is validated and how it
is ensured to be accurate.
IS THE PROVIDER’S MODEL DATA-DRIVEN OR
RULES-BASED?
Knowing that you wish to adopt data-driven
attribution, be sure to establish that any provider
you consider is employing an algorithmic model.
Avoid providers who utilize pre-determined rules in
assigning attribution credit.

IS THE PROVIDER MEDIA AGNOSTIC?
Consider partner motivations carefully. Does a provider
you are considering have a vested interest in any
media property? When a provider has a stake in the
media serving or content landscape, they aren’t an
unbiased third party capable of giving you the best
recommendations for your business. Don’t settle for a
“good enough” solution — especially if the provider has
a hand in the cookie jar.
HOW IS THE PROVIDER’S MODEL VALIDATED?
Your provider should be able to tell you how their
solution’s model is validated to provide accurate
insights. One best practice to look for is lift analysis, in
which conversion rates are compared by including and
excluding touch points to reveal the true value or “lift”
each provides along the way.
If excluding a touch point yields identical or similar
conversion rates, the missing event offers little value.
If including it increases conversion, the touch point
demonstrates value — and deserves more credit. Probe
into the manner in which your provider proves the value
of their algorithms by asking them about validation.
HOW ARE YOUR DATA INPUTS MONITORED?
Gaining visibility into the customer journey may suggest
strategic shifts — and create new debates. Stakeholders
may ask: “How do we know that these attribution
insights are accurate?”
To answer that question, you need to be able to verify
and monitor data inputs to ensure accuracy. Talk to your
provider about real-time access to your data inputs, so
your organization can trust the validity of the outputs.
HOW ARE NON-CONVERTING AND NON-SAMPLED
DATA HANDLED?
While a sampled data set can provide directional
information, it doesn’t provide a clear picture of
all audiences and segments. A data-driven model
determines the importance of each touch point
by looking at the entire data set — including both
converting AND non-converting data.
Ask potential providers about non-converting data. If the
solution doesn’t consider it, it can’t offer insights about
which touch points aren’t as impactful and may over-
credit them.
HOW DOES IT HANDLE VIEWABILITY?
When you think about the fact that as much as 50% of
your campaign ads may never be seen by a consumer,
you realize that viewability is a key concern. Ask
potential providers whether ads that are served off the
viewable portion of the page are given credit.
Accurate solutions will only count those ads that COULD
have had an impact in your journey by being seen. If
not, your solution is applying pre-determined rules or
assumptions, rather than measuring the true impact of
each touch point.
Adometry offers standardized, real-time access to
check data inputs with Monitor.
Learn more about validating data-driven attribution
models and the strength of complete data sets.
Learn more about verifying viewability across
campaigns with data-driven attribution.
Learn more about data-driven attribution insights
that inform strategic planning versus the value of
incremental metrics to drive in-flight campaign
optimization.
Resources

HOW DOES THE PROVIDER’S MODEL HANDLE
AVERAGE VERSUS INCREMENTAL METRICS?
If you want your data-driven attribution solution to drive
campaign optimization, check that it offers incremental
metrics. While average metrics inform strategic planning
for your next campaign, optimization requires an
incremental view.
You know instinctively that simply doubling investment
doesn’t double your return. Rather, you need to see
the impact of each dollar spent during a campaign to
know where to spend the next dollar. Likewise, if certain
conversions or actions are driving incrementally higher
revenues, you’ll need to be able to change your goals.
Ensure your chosen solution offers incremental insights.
IS THE SOLUTION ABLE TO ACCOUNT FOR
EXTERNAL FACTORS SUCH AS SEASONALITY?
Consider whether you want a holistic data-driven
attribution model that can factor in external impacts like
weather or seasonality. For example, while retailers often
see a spike around the holiday season, is their marketing
driving growth in revenue or is it just the holiday season
alone? A model that takes seasonality into account helps
you make the best use of your marketing during the
times of year when you spend the most.
Cutting-Edge Capabilities
Now that we’ve explored the underlying methodology,
look carefully at capabilities various data-driven
attribution solutions offer. Is the solution you are
buying comprehensive enough for you? Be sure to
choose robust marketing performance measurement
and capabilities that are actionable for your
organization. Here are some key areas to focus on
when looking into capabilities.
DOES YOUR ATTRIBUTION SOLUTION INPUT BOTH
DIGITAL AND OFFLINE MARKETING DATA?
The worlds of MMM and attribution are colliding and
the ability to combine data-driven attribution with a
marketing mix modeling is rapidly becoming a reality.
As you assess possible partners, note those who are
moving to combine additional offerings such as next-
generation MMM. If you are using both traditional and
digital channels, choose a provider that offers a solid
approach to both discplines.
CAN THE PROVIDER ACCOUNT FOR OFFLINE
ACTIVITIES AND SALES?
While consumers research products online, the
majority of purchases take place offline — either over
a phone or in a store. While most digital marketers
target online conversions only, to truly see the full
consumer journey you must link online and offline
consumer behavior. Matching offline purchases to
online marketing requires a provider that has built a
technological platform that accepts the right data, but
also that has built an array of partnerships to tie data
from across the marketing ecosystem.
HOW DOES THIS SOLUTION HANDLE MULTI-
SCREEN CUSTOMER JOURNEYS?
More than a device to target, mobile is a connective
platform. As consumers grab the screen that is most
convenient to their purpose and location at any given
For more on factors from seasonality to economic
indices data, see Adometry’s whitepaper,
“Incorporating External factors into Marketing
Attribution and Optimization Models”.
Resource
“Ideally, attributed values would
inform the mix models, so the
mix models can optimize more
effectively. Like a harmonious
circle of life.”
Tina Moffett, Forrester

time, marketers are reaching the same audiences on
both PCs and mobile devices. The right data-driven
attribution solutions can help you to assess mobility
across your media efforts.
Explore potential providers’ ability to identify users
across multi-screen journeys and be sure to ask about
cookie related issues — such as cookie deletion and
blocking — that are exacerbated as users move from
screen to screen.
WILL YOUR ORGANIZATION BE ABLE TO
OPERATIONALIZE SOLUTION OUTPUTS?
Revealing the true value of each touch point with data-
driven attribution is a huge achievement — but it’s not
enough. To understand what is driving your success,
you have to be able to take action on the insights your
solution provides. There are two main concepts to
evaluate regarding ability to fully leverage data-driven
attribution insights.
1 Access and Interpretability: Ensure that you can
understand and easily act on data-driven attribution
results. First, check that the solution offers interactive
access with a well-designed user interface. You should
be able delve into your data in detail and customize
views based on your role. Likewise, tactical budget
recommendations should be provided in an easily
exportable format that allows you to feed information
directly to your media partners. The right solution
should create internal efficiencies over time.
2 Cohesion with RTB Partners: Real-time Bidding
(RTB) has grown at a phenomenal rate — the fact
that this is the future of media buying is clear.
According to eMarketer, RTB spending in the United
States will reach $7.1 billion by 2016. An ability to
tie data-driven attribution information directly into
your programmatic bidding platforms can increase
the efficiency of your media buying without adding
additional resources or costs.
CAN THE PROVIDER OFFER YOU AUDIENCE DATA?
Lastly, as your brand continues its battle for market
share in an increasingly competitive market, you must
understand who your audience is and how to best
reach them. Picking a partner that has access to the
best audience segmentation data — and that will
incorporate this information into your reporting — is a
critical advantage.
Ensure that your chosen solution partners with the
top audience data companies and provides a variety of
mapping options to capture the audience information
you need.
Technology Roadmap
After careful consideration of any provider’s current
capabilities, looking at their technology roadmap will
confirm the company’s ability to keep up with the
industry. Will your partner be positioned to handle your
needs both now and into the future?
Learn more about what it takes to connect online
activities and offline sales, as well as tie together
multi-screen customer journeys.
Learn more about Adometry’s ability to automatically
connect with Real Time Bidding providers.
Resource
Resource
Access and Interpretability: Can you get the
insights you need when you need them? Your team
may need to see creative by audience segment in
order to determine the best messaging for best
performing audiences. Be sure that you can.
Cohesion with RTB Partners: How much does
attribution-informed RTB help? An Adometry
customer saw an estimated gain in efficiencies of
3-5% of PPC spend by integrating attribution results
into search bid management platforms.
Example
Example

It’s great to ensure a provider offers the specific
capability you need today. But what about next year
when you triple your mobile spend? Or when you decide
to tie a new social technology to your TV strategy?
Look at any potential provider’s future strength by
assessing the frequency of updates, strength of
partnerships and their habitual response to feedback
in order to select a solution that has the best potential
to keep up with your evolving channel strategy, teams
and tactics.
HOW OFTEN IS THE SOLUTION UPDATED
OR IMPROVED?
When it comes to data-driven attribution, most
companies are still quite young — which can mean
amazing growth spurts or big stumbles. What’s the
history of the company you are considering? Have they
innovated quickly over the past years? Do they spend
time on the right improvements? It’s ok if they don’t
have every capability today, but do you have confidence
that they will tomorrow?
DOES THE PROVIDER HAVE
POWERFUL PARTNERSHIPS?
We told you how important partnerships are in terms
of operationalizing your outputs, streamlining your
implementation and onboarding and incorporating
third party data sets like mobile and audience data.
Therefore, you need to ensure that your company has a
continuous business development plan for partnerships
that is tied to their roadmap. You aren’t going to stop
exploring the newest technologies any time soon, they
shouldn’t either.
HOW DOES THIS PROVIDER HANDLE FEEDBACK?
Accepting and responding to feedback is a true sign of
the kind of partnership that is critical to your success
with a data-driven attribution provider. Ask yourself:
does this company accept client feedback — and even
criticism — with interest? Do they actively solicit feedback
to improve the offering — and do they act on it?
Bottom Line: Selecting the right data-driven attribution
partner is critical to your success in overall marketing
performance measurement. Be sure to consider every
aspect of the partner’s offering and organization to make
a great selection.
The Forrester Wave for Attribution showed leading
providers changing every year from 2009 through
2011. Be sure to pick a provider that is positioned for
future growth.
Pro Tip

Step
Get Prepared
Deﬁne Goals1
Justify Budget2
Be Selective3
Get Prepared4
Evaluate Success5
1
2
3
4
5

Step 4: Get Prepared
Picking an attribution provider is just the beginning —
next, you must get ready for integration. Streamline your
implementation by preparing both human and data
resources to hit the ground running. Evaluating data
readiness and preparing stakeholders ahead of time will
help you determine the depth of support you may need
during implementation and sets your organization up
for focused progress towards business goals.
Recruit Cross-Departmental
Teams
Establish cross-company involvement, ensuring that all
teams are invested in utilizing attribution insights and
all are accountable to a program owner for providing
required inputs. The most successful teams tend to
have representation in the following skill sets:
PROGRAM OWNER
You need a program owner to manage onboarding and
provide ongoing leadership. Responsible for getting
your data-driven attribution program up and running,
this person will ensure all inputs are provided to your
provider — even if they are not interested in the
outputs. The program owner must keep the project plan
provided by your attribution vendor, tracking down all
data sets across departments as needed.
CHANNEL OWNERS AND ANALYSTS
You will need to gain input, consensus and data access
from each of your channel owners. At the minimum, you
will need them to provide:
• Access to reporting systems for event identification as
well as impression, click and cost aggregate data for
each channel
• KPI and objectives definitions
During step 1, your team came to consensus on unifying
metrics for your marketing campaigns. Now, it is
necessary to brief your data-driven attribution provider
on your planning and optimization process. This will
ensure that their consultants set up the most beneficial
views for each of your channel teams.
TRAFFIC MANAGERS
These are the team members within your organization
that ensure your ads get trafficked through ad servers
and bid management systems. They set up reporting
systems and ensure all tracking tags are sent to your
third party publishers and advertising partners. As such,
they will need to help implement data-driven attribution
tracking tags throughout the life of the program.
Does your provider know both your common
metrics and your specific needs? Though you are
measuring all channels’ success based on ad spend
return, the email team may see opportunities
to fine-tune the creative message by audience
segment. Meanwhile, the display team may need to
make decisions across creative, site and campaign
levels, including a custom behavioral targeting
grouping. These needs can be met!
Example

IT TEAMS
Don’t overlook the need to secure support from IT and
web management teams — they likely hold the keys to
data you have or will wish to collect. Who are the key IT
leads that will need to participate? While IT teams may
not be interested in the outputs of your data-driven
attribution program, it is crucial that you involve them if
you need to make any changes to your website. Other
questions to consider asking your IT teams:
• Are there known issues that must be resolved in order
to gain access to data?
• Once we access the data, considering the volumes
available, do we expect significant time delays in being
able to transfer it?
• Are there any website freeze or maintenance periods
we should be considering?
Prepare your Data
Having prepared the people you need to succeed,
let’s explore the actual data requirements you must
consider. How clean and standardized is your data?
While your data-driven attribution provider will help you
through the process, putting some thought into data
readiness will speed up your implementation and thwart
any unwelcome surprises. Data modeling solutions
are only as good as the data that goes into the model.
Examine the inputs required in order to run data-driven
attribution and take action where needed.
EVENT DATA
Your solution will need data on impressions, clicks and
conversions for each marketing factor that you want
incorporated. For example, you may want to include
display, search, email and social media in your analysis.
At a minimum, you will need display impressions and
clicks, search clicks, email clicks and opens, and social
media impressions and clicks. You will also need the
volume of action taken on your website from there (total
sales, downloads or lead submissions).
REFERENCE DATA
Event data is time-stamped and associated with a
unique identifier, but adding reference data is a key
step in making results more interpretable. For example,
event data may show 100 impressions for creative
12345 in placement 6850385. You would rather know
that it was your spring sale creative on Mediamath’s
behavorially targeted 300x250 placement. Likewise,
reference data allows data groupings. If you have 1000
creative types, you want to group them by message
(across different sizes) to evaluate the creative content.
Without reference data to provide context, reporting
becomes less actionable for your teams.
COST DATA
The last major piece of data that an attribution solution
should take into consideration is cost. Without
associating cost to your various marketing tactics, it’s
difficult to evaluate performance across tactics. For
example, if you had a search ad that brings in 10 sales
and an email that brings in 10 sales, you might consider
them equally valuable. If you added in cost, however,
you will see that your search ad cost $10 total for those
Don’t forget to ask about site freezes. Many retailer
IT teams lock down websites at critical times, such
as during the holiday season, to avoid any accidental
maintenance outages.
Pro Tip

10 sales (eCPA of $1) while the email cost $1000 (eCPA
of $100). It is extremely important to incorporate cost
data for all paid marketing channels in order to get true
value comparisons.
Once you have know which data points you want and
need to incorporate into your data-driven attribution
solution, be sure to consider plan three key factors into
your timeline:
1 Data Standardization: Clicks are generally captured
on your website through a piece of code that
captures the referring source information. In order to
capture them, you will need to define unified tracking
URL parameters.
2.DMP Integration: Data collection is difficult. Ensure
that you compare capabilities and formats between
your DMP and your data-driven attribution provider.
Connect the two early and ensure a compatible
working relationship.
3 Data Hygiene: To begin prepping data sets for
transfer to your attribution provider, your organization
must run tests to ensure that the data is “clean”, not
garbled and ready to run through the model smoothly.
Bottom Line: Integration is a project in and of itself.
To drive the maximum benefit in the shortest amount
of time, rally your organization to prioritize timely
integration actions.
Explore more tips on building a data-driven
attribution program once you’ve selected a provider,
in the “10 Tactics for Building an Effective Attribution
Program” whitepaper.
Resource

Step
Evaluate Success
Deﬁne Goals1
Justify Budget2
Be Selective3
Get Prepared4
Evaluate Success5
1
2
3
4
5

Step 5: Evaluate Success
To build enthusiasm and credibility for data-driven
attribution, you must envision and evaluate success.
Having defined your conversion events and what
marketing success looks like for your organization,
leverage those goals and metrics to rigorously evaluate
your provider’s performance. To do so, consider the
entire engagement — from measured gains to quality
of service.
MARKETING PERFORMANCE
As you see increases in marketing performance and
decreases in cost or inefficiency, share bottom-line
indicators of success with stakeholders. Success
indicators include:
• eCPA reduction
• Optimization within channels
• Optimization across channels
• Level-of-effort reduction in reporting
ENTERPRISE ABILITY
Your provider should help you identify and break
down organizational silos. Note areas for potential
improvement and move to address them. Success
indicators include:
• Holistic budgets more easily managed across
marketing teams
• KPIs and success metrics aligned across
all departments
EASE AND FLEXIBILITY
It should be easy to make changes in your data-driven
attribution program as you learn more. Be sure that
your provider tailors services and processes to your
specific needs. Success indicators include:
• Clear ownership of the change process
• Progress tracked between your teams and your
provider team
• Timely responses to customization or
cancellation requests
QUALITY OF OUTPUT
Data-driven attribution insights should be reported and
interpreted in a way that is clear and actionable for your
organization. Success indicators include:
• Teams use attribution tools to easily view and
interpret insights
• Organization able to readily put these insights to use
• Ability to confirm that insights are based on accurate data
TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP
Your provider must deliver within established budget
parameters and without hidden costs or scope issues.
Success indicators include:
• Clear, up-front pricing options and variations
• Flexible choices in attribution reporting so you can
tailor the solution to your needs without hidden
charges for customization
• Data-driven attribution costs represent a reasonable
percentage of overall marketing spend

INNOVATIVE ROAD MAP
To provide ongoing success, your provider will both
keep pace with industry advances and adapt to your
changing needs. Success indicators include:
• A flexible platform that can combine data-driven
attribution with next-generation MMM
• A growing customer base, strong partnerships and a
track record of innovation
Bottom Line: Your stakeholders will be more invested
in driving success with data-driven attribution if they can
envision what success looks like, and concretely evaluate
whether goals are being achieved. Show them the way.

Conclusion

CONCLUSION
Conclusion
MAKE YOUR MOVE TO DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING
Today’s top marketers need better marketing
performance measurement practices as part of their
marketing intelligence platform. Adopting data-driven
attribution means looking inward before you can look
out — but the potential gains are worth the effort.
Get on the road to fact-based decision-making by
evaluating potential solutions and providers with an
informed eye. Ensure your organization can onboard,
gather and take action on insights. Soon, you’ll find
that examining the customer journey with data-driven
attribution is the key to refining your marketing strategy
and maximizing performance at every step.

Glossary

GLOSSARY
Glossary
C
Conversion Path – A series of marketing touch-points
encompassing all interactions a customer has with a
business before making a purchase.
Conversions – Conversions are actions that convert
a visitor into a paying customer. While they typically
involve the sale of goods or services, conversions can
also be softer, such as signing up for a newsletter, or
downloading a coupon.
D
Data-Driven Attribution – A form of marketing
attribution modeling that relies on the marketing data
itself to help build and refine the model, instead of
using arbitrary rules or pre-determined weights to
determine attribution credit.
Data Normalization – The process organizing
the contents of one or many databases to reduce
redundancy and dependency, thereby increasing
efficient use of the data.
Data Modeling – The process of modeling an
information system, (in our case a business’s
marketing operations), based on known data
about the system in order to better understand
the complicated interdependencies and effects of
change upon the system.
E
eCPA – (Effective Cost Per Action) A metric used to
gauge the effectiveness of advertising in terms of the
average cost of each action or conversion.
K
KPIs – Key Performance Indicators are qualitative
business measurements intended to gauge success
or failure by. KPIs will differ based on department
or business goals, but a good KPI will always be
formulated after a clear understanding of business
operations, limitations and goals has been achieved.
P
Programmatic Buying – Programmatic buying refers
to automated advertising exchanges that buy, sell and
serve display ads. These integrated marketing systems
allow marketers to dynamically control the volume,
price and targeted audience of display advertising.
Marketing Segmentation - Segmentation is a
marketing strategy that involves breaking a large
target audience into smaller sub-sets based on similar
traits. Common marketing segments center around
geographic, demographic and behavioral intent data.
R
ROI – (Return on Investment) A metric used to judge
the efficiency of an investment. ROI = (gain from
investment - cost of investment) / cost of investment
RoAS – (Return on Ad Spend) RoAS is a ratio used
to determine the dollar amount earned for every
dollar spent in advertising. An RoAS of 11:1 would
mean you received $11 in sales for every $1 you
spent on advertising.
RTB - (Real Time Bidding) A programmatic way of
selling individual ad inventory to the highest bidder
on an per-impression basis. RTB allows advertisers
to optimize ad spend across multiple platforms and
is a component of the larger programmatic buying
ecosystem.

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About Adometry by Google™
Adometry by Google transforms the way the world’s top brands improve marketing performance.
Acting as marketing’s “system of record,” Adometry solves the complex challenge of integrating,
measuring, and optimizing marketing performance across all channels—both online and offline.
Combining and interpreting previously silo’d sources of data; the Adometry Marketing Performance
Management Suite provides data-driven attribution, modern marketing mix modeling, and intelligent
optimization recommendations across and within channels. As a result, marketers are able to identify
their true impact on the customer journey and generate actionable insights that improve ROI.

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