Digital Marketing Attribution Models

Gonza Pastorino28 March

We talk about attribution models in Digital Marketing when we refer to the rules we apply to establish the supports assigned to a certain conversion value or sale.

Therefore, attribution models are essential because they measure the value of different channels or touchpoints (organic, social, remarketing, email, search, etc.) through which a user passes when going through the sales funnel.

How are channels, interactions and conversions related?

Many of the analytics tools – for example: Google Analytics – we use follow the last interaction model, attributing the conversion credit to the last channel the user interacted with.

The issue is that if we follow the last interaction model, we conduct an unrealistic study, as we will end up attributing a large number of conversions to the direct channel, even though other channels such as organic, social, or referral had a prior impact to the last interaction.

We must consider the nature of each of the channels, because not all of them have the same influence on the conversion funnel: some tend to be at the beginning and others at the end.

The channels we usually find at the beginning of the funnel are: SEO and Display. On the contrary, the channels that frequently generate the last interaction are: Direct Traffic, Email Marketing, AdWords Remarketing and Search.

What is our great challenge?

It consists of deciding what credit to give to each of the digital channels in the conversion path: Do we attribute the conversion to organic or direct traffic?

With multichannel attribution models we seek to solve the most complex conversion paths or with more interactions from different channels prior to conversion.

In addition, we should consider the interactions of the same user with various brand channels between different devices.

It is quite possible that the online interactions that we see reflected in the conversion paths have an offline impact that , if not considered, we would be detracting credit from the digital channels.

What is the purpose of searching for the best attribution model?

By allowing us to adjust the investment in each of our channels, we will ensure that those that have a greater impact on the final conversion also receive more importance in the conversion path.

This way we will extract key information that we will use to analyze and improve our marketing strategy and optimize the investment.

Looking for Digital Marketing advice? Write to us at hola@boomit.com.uy