Value at every point in journey (Precision Marketing)
The long accepted notion of "last click" or "last view" of an ad receiving all the glory for a subsequent sale or conversion is now dated. Tushar Balsara, head of operations and assosiate director at MediaVest explains more.
Granted, this approach has been sufficient and has built a medium which is recognised as one of the most accountable media channels. However, one of the fundamental flaws with this is that it ignores all exposures that lead up to and influences a sale, resulting in some elements of your campaign being given more credit than they truly deserve. As marketers, this means our budgets are not necessarily aligned in the most appropriate way to maximise our campaigns.
The digital media business is no longer simply about buying ad space. It's a platform for engagement, focused on delivering experiences. Search, social networks, widgets, videos and a multitude of touchpoints each deliver a unique experience. We need to understand the impact of these touchpoints on the final sale, in order to justify our continued investments in each of these independent channels.
By redefining the attribution methodology, we can more accurately value the impact of each interaction. To do this, each touchpoint should consider a number of variables: recency, frequency, creative size, on-site response behaviour to KPI pages and, lastly, the environment of the media buy. Each marketer needs to evaluate their customer data and work out a methodology that works for them in line with their campaign objectives.
One of our clients implemented custom attribution methodologies and found that generic search keywords had been undervalued using the old last-click measurement. Based on the new attribution data, the client could double their spend on volume driving generic terms and saw an increase in conversions for the same cost per acquisition. They also identified and removed a wide range of "long-tail" keywords which did not play any influence in the path to conversion, saving an additional 30 per cent of their budget.
The concepts of behaviour and value based targeting will continue to get more complex and settling for the old, familiar last-click methodology simply won't do.
