Attribution in marketing is the craft of understanding how marketing efforts attract and convert prospects into customers. This is a complex exercise and the best way available to do this today is through touchpoints, which are interactions with your customer.  

Data has been crucial to gaining user insight. According to a SparkPost report, 82% of marketing leaders are actively preparing for privacy changes, and 67% say they are concerned with how privacy changes will affect their ability to perform.

For over a decade, online advertising companies have been using web cookies, primarily third-party cookies (aka third-party trackers), to identify Internet users across different websites, a practice known as cross-site tracking. The purpose of identification is to run behaviourally targeted advertising based on a user’s web-browsing history, conduct frequency capping (i.e., avoid showing the same user the same ad multiple times over a given period of time), measure the performance of ad campaigns, and attribute ad views (impressions) and clicks to conversions. 

In the early days, cross-site tracking was a process that happened behind the scenes; in the background as the websites loaded. But it didn’t take web users, the media, and lawmakers long to discover that these web cookies were being used to “identify individuals” across the Internet and build profiles containing information about their interests and behavior.

Combine all that with the data collection practices of Google and Facebook and you’ve got yourself a pretty interesting situation. One important thing to bear in mind is that data breaches and leakages (i.e., mass data sharing between companies or access to data due to security issues) have been one of the biggest reasons for the growing concern.   

The good news is that the future is far from grim. Unified measurement platforms and machine learning solutions can usher us into the next ‘Golden Age’ of digital marketing. Online Privacy will continue to be a concern for anyone who does anything on the website. Owing to these concerns, companies, and countries are passing regulatory laws to protect user data.

New challenges in marketing…

Third-Party Cookie Deprecation

While third-party cookies – the brick-and-mortar for most marketers are soon going to be a thing of the past. Safari and Firefox have already ceased support of third-party cookies, and Google is phasing out Chrome support starting in 2024.

Walled Gardens

Mega brands like Google, Amazon, and Facebook control the digital advertising segment. They collect huge amounts of data within their platforms and then use it to show hyper-targeted ads to consumers. Data collection and usage is one of their greatest assets, so it kind of makes total sense for them to protect it, right?  Especially with Google, a major chunk of its revenue comes from advertising, so why would the company shut off one of its most powerful resources?  

Traditional Workarounds 

 

Marketers find new ways to solve problems and data privacy is no exception. Many of the workarounds that exist are not built to handle the amount of data typically collected, and have not been built for marketing for a while. This can result in costly and time-consuming data collection methods.  

Multi-channel marketing is the process of interacting with prospects across websites, digital ads, social media, direct mail, catalogs, email, mobile, or any other channel chosen by the prospect. Marketing your products and services on a single channel isn’t enough for today’s consumers. Your prospects want to have the option of shopping in-store, via mobile, or even by phone with a sales rep.  

As the number of channels increases, marketers must adapt and remain accessible to their potential customers. Marketing across multiple channels is all about giving the consumer a choice to interact with the business when and where they want. But one challenge is that since prospects are interacting with businesses on several channels, determining which channel had the most impact on conversion can be difficult to determine. Learning which touch point has the strongest impact on a sale could help marketers to become more efficient in their campaigns.

Another issue with marketing across multiple channels is targeted marketing. Prospects are more likely to convert when they receive personalized messages on their preferred channel. Marketers also have difficulty creating highly choreographed campaigns, and they aren’t always integrated, with a consistent message and experience found throughout each channel.  

The ability to create consistent experience across channels can be a task, but is the ultimate goal of cross-channel marketing. Cross-channel marketing aims to create a seamless experience for prospects, so they don’t get an entirely different experience with a company when they visit a different channel.

The fundamental difference between multi-channel marketing and cross-channel marketing is the level of interchangeability. Businesses with multi-channel campaigns have a presence on multiple channels, but the experience isn’t always consistent for prospects. Companies which engage in cross-channel marketing want channels to be interchangeable, so prospects can get a seamless, consistent experience wherever they go. A study from Infosys found that 59% of shoppers who have experienced personalization believe it has an impact on their shopping. When developing personalized messages, marketers need to create a single customer view, with information from multiple channels aggregated in one place.  

The importance of multichannel marketing

Multichannel marketing is important for the simple reason that you must be where your customers are. And they are everywhere. If you need another reason, consider this: Multichannel customers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers do. There’s no doubt that customers today have more control over the buying process than marketers do. Thanks to the proliferation of available channels, customers have more choices than ever when it comes to how they want to get information. 

In a previous article, we covered attribution and what it means in marketing. Accurate attribution however goes deeper than just cross-device and cross-channel and there are various types of attribution that every marketer must understand.  

Presently, we focus on four types of attributions for which the AdTech & MarTech industry is finding workable solutions.  

Cross-Device Attribution

Attribution comes with its complexities and the fact that users are active on multiple devices can further complicate effective targeting and attribution. Cross-device attribution measures the touch-points the user had with a brand before they converted across devices (e.g., a laptop, tablet, and smartphone).  However, achieving this kind of attribution can be a challenge especially when a user may begin to engage with a product or brand on one device and then complete the transaction on another.  However, deterministic and probabilistic matching can help identify users with higher accuracy.  

Online to Offline and Offline to Online Attribution

This is probably the oldest of all attributions – and dates back to the time when companies began selling from physical stores and then made their way into the digital world.  

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Online-Offline Attribution Techniques

This type of attribution is time-bound and uses a set time to attribute website visits to a marketing campaign. The technique uses a set time frame to attribute website visits to a marketing campaign. ‘Online and Point-of-Sale (POS) surveys and Coupon or Code offerings’ are examples of this technique.   

Inter-Channel Attribution  

Intra-channel attribution focuses on attributing conversions within the same channel – e.g., search. This model is useful if you want to discover how different areas of the same channel contribute to conversions. Inter and Intra channel attribution models provide isolated insights into particular channels, but might not capture the complexity of the online customer journey, hence, this is where the concept of multi-touch attribution models was born.

Multi-touch (or multi-interaction) attribution models were created to help measure and attribute conversions to individual touchpoints, online channels, and even individual ad clicks. 

Attribution can be identified as one of the primary challenges in marketing today. Online marketing has become complex and marketers are consistently challenged to update their understanding of the subject. Attribution in the marketing world points to three main areas – multi-channel attribution, conversion attribution, and multi-touch attribution. Marketing attribution is the model in which marketers can credit the conversion to a specific marketing touchpoint. Marketing attribution is meant to show specific impact on pipeline and revenue generation. As marketers push to become more data-driven and strategic in their efforts against the educated buyer, they need to tie their campaigns back to what matters most for businesses: the bottom line. 

Marketers today have their work cut out for them. The average customer uses 10 channels to communicate with companies, which means the digital marketing landscape is more fragmented than ever. As customers’ expectations rise, so does the temperature in the proverbial kitchen for marketing management. 

Research shows that marketers’ top priorities include optimizing the marketing mix for the best return and modernizing their tools and technologies. These teams are also revamping their marketing metrics for a new era. The same survey shows that 41% of marketing organizations are using marketing attribution modeling (e.g., marketing mix modelling, multi-touch attribution) as a measure of ROI. 

Attribution supports some of the commonly asked questions… 

• What are our customer’s touchpoints with our brand during their customer journey? 

• When a customer convers (downloads an eBook), how much credit must be given to the various channels and touch-points that they have interacted with? 

• How do various channels influence conversions as a group? 

Getting the appropriate answers to these questions is exactly what attribution is about. 

While data privacy regulations tighten and the world moves toward a cookieless future, first-party data will become even more important to marketing campaigns. Currently, 52% of marketers are prioritizing the collection of more first-party data from digital experiences due to regulations. 

As brands shift to using first-party data, they’re building better relationships with customers, providing more value, and optimizing their marketing campaigns. The deprecation of third-party cookies has made conversion tracking and re-targeting difficult. Turning digital Ads into billboard Ads! We are inevitably headed towards a Cookie-less future, as Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla have already parted ways with third-party cookies, and soon Google will follow. Some of the most common repercussions that are seen are the loss of signals, lower Ad performance, decreased ROAS, Increased CCPA, and so on and so forth.  

Here’s where first-party data steps in to be a life savior as it is the data collected directly from your user base, and is more reliable than other types for predicting and forecasting your audience’s future behavioural trends. 

Read more on first-party data here. 

Campaign optimization is a strategy used by marketers to boost the effectiveness of marketing or advertising campaigns. In terms of advertising or marketing, it enables advertisers to achieve the best possible results. Campaigns can be optimized for particular objectives like website clicks, engagement, reach, or conversions. Why is it important? It enables marketers to reach their objectives while ensuring the best Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).  

Analyze your key performance indicators: To begin, you need to determine the goal of your digital campaign, the number of served impressions, click-through rate CTR, unique visitors on the websites, cost per lead, engagement, etc.

Reach out for the right measurement tools: Use the right tools that can help you measure your Ad campaign performance. Google Analytics helps you measure the number of unique users you get during the campaign. This is in addition to your bounce rate and the time spent on a particular web page. But the most crucial aspect is your ‘Conversion Rate.’

Launch right before you go big: If your customers are not familiar with your product or service, it is recommended to begin with a brand awareness campaign where the focus is on cost per impression rather than cost per click. With CPM your cost per click can also be much cheaper. For a thousand impressions, you theoretically can get up to thousand ad clicks (if the offer draws the attention and interest of viewers).

Focus on your first-party data strategy: The third-party cookie demise is here, and you’re surely going to be losing access to identifiers that tell you what’s working and what’s not. The focus on user privacy and data compliance is immense and is likely to grow in the next few years. Equip yourself with the right solution to first-party data enablement.

Target Better: Enabling first-party data with CAPI integrations across channels is just the first step to clean and compliant user data. The better you know your target audience; the more efficiently can you use techniques like ‘Multi-channel’ integrations and ‘Omni-channel marketing’ to your benefit. 

Brands from the retail sector recognize the constant need to be connected to their customers. Omnichannel marketing allows marketers to provide an unparalleled shopping experience across channels inclusive of digital and physical stores.

Let us begin with a simple definition – An omnichannel strategy (i.e., omnichannel marketing) is when the customer is kept at the heart of the equation and is engaged differently on all the channels based on where they are in the customer lifecycle. Being present at the different touchpoints of a customer’s buying journey is critical to a brand’s success. In order to do that, brands should be aware of the customer’s needs, wants, and preferences.

A successful omnichannel strategy keeps the customers’ data and product data synced across all channels. The ultimate aim is to optimize customer convenience so that every aspect of engagement with a brand is seamless.

E-commerce has been touted as the channel of choice for retailers. U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the first quarter of 2022 totaled $231.4 billion. (https://frontofficesports.com/pro-archive/e-commerce-industry-experiences-strong-headwinds/ ) We can attribute this growth to the critical role that social media continues to play in the advertising space. Amazon is the undisputed leader in the online retail space–accounting for 39.5% of all US retail eCommerce sales in 2022. The e-commerce giant has been described as ruthless, and efficient, and has set the bar so high that the rest of the retail space is still playing catch up.   

Navigating challenges

If you’re a marketer, you’re probably used to third-party cookies being an essential part of your Ad targeting approach to potential buyers. Given the rising concerns of user tracking, privacy issues, and security risks, the phase-out of third-party cookies has begun and retailers need to be aware of its impact.

Traditionally, retailers have relied on data management platforms and third-party data service offerings in order to understand customers, behavior patterns, preferences, and segmentation. The most significant impact of the third-party cookie demise is the loss of identifiers. In addition to this, stringent privacy policies such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) do not make it easy for retailers. Hence owning first-party data about their customers is the defining factor that helps identify and understand their customers in a seamless and unhindered manner.  

There are many ways in which access to first-party data can be sought, one of them is either building out your own infrastructure for first-party data collection, storage, and use; or the other alternative is opting for an easy-to-use, first-party data enablement service provider. Either way, getting hold of a firm omnichannel approach can work wonders for the retail sector.

Working the Omnichannel approach

As I mentioned earlier, the omnichannel approach integrates multiple shopping channels, including TV, mobile apps, websites, phone, etc. These different consumer touch points are in constant communication and there’s inventory visibility across all the channels. For instance, a customer can start a purchase in one a mobile app and complete it on the company’s website. Alternatively, a customer can see an item in a store, go home, purchase it online, and pick it up later from another nearby store.

How to use the Omnichannel approach

Below are a few essential tips that will help any retail brand optimize its shopping experience better.

Optimize across channels including Apps

Lisa Gevelber, Google’s VP of Marketing, says that in moments of need, 96% of the users reach out to their smartphone to find answers. They have become so integral to the decision-making process that 70% of smartphone owners turn to their devices before making a purchase in-store. That’s why it comes as no surprise that individuals spend 50% of their time on mobile apps. From a business perspective, mobile apps are emerging as one of the reliable channels for driving conversions. The State of Mobile 2019 reported 194 billion mobile app downloads in 2018, a clear indication that this is one channel that can bring you sales if utilized the right way.

However, with more than 2.1 million apps listed on the Android play store and more than 1 million on Apple’s app store, garnering the attention of your customers and prospects on an app can be quite a task. And even if you get them to your app, keeping them engaged on your platform and reducing the churn by retaining them requires some marketing efforts. That’s where omnichannel marketing strategy comes to help. It helps you to keep your users invested in your app throughout the customer journey – right from the time you onboard them till the time you retain and convert them into brand advocates.  

Optimizing for mobile devices can have a positive impact on achieving higher engagement and ROAS. Studies show that 62 percent of smartphone users in Britan have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months, according to EuroITGroup. As a retailer, you should embrace mobile optimization to give consumers a seamless mobile experience. Make sure your mobile app or website is optimized for various smartphones and tablets and has a simplified navigation process to make it easy for consumers to get what they are looking for.  

Personalizing offers for the users

A research by Infosys reveals that 31% of the surveyed consumers expected better personalization in their shopping experience than the current one. In an era of Netflix and Amazon, a brand that personalizes the user’s experience, especially on mobile apps, witnesses more growth than non-personalized ones. Omnichannel marketing allows you to segment your users based on different parameters and deliver personalized offers to them.

Efficient Retargeting

Worldpay reveals that 67% of shoppers begin their shopping on one device and finish it on the other device. A user might lose interest in your brand if they have to search and add items all over again after switching devices. Omnichannel marketing lets you create a seamless experience not only on the web but also on a mobile app for your users; so users can shop anywhere, anytime without going through the drill of searching, adding, and completing transactions repeatedly.

Generates higher AOV

According to a study by OmniSend, customers who interact with a campaign on three or more channels are more likely to purchase and come back for repeat purchase than those who interact with a single-channel campaign. The study further revealed that the Average Order Value for an omnichannel campaign was 13% higher than that of a single-channel campaign.

The biggest challenge here is if you don’t have a single view of customer activity across channels. Apart from access to unhindered access to seamless, authentic, quick first-party data. Information that you gather needs to come in a standard manner and having a stable infrastructure to handle these data volumes can be a challenge to navigate as well. 

As the retail industry continues to revolutionize the shopping experience and consumers adopt new purchasing habits, adopting the right omnichannel approach paired with an excellent first-party data enabler can elevate your campaign efficiency and overall performance, as a result benefitting your eCommerce business.  

Omnichannel marketing is the seamless integration of messaging; online and offline touchpoints as consumers move down the sales funnel, enabling a more impactful customer experience. This could include physical (stores) and digital channels (websites).

John Bowden, Senior VP of Customer Care at Time Warner Cable describes ‘Omni-channel Marketing.’ He says: “Multi-channel is an operational view – how you allow the customer to complete transactions in each channel. Omni-channel, however, is viewing the experience through the eyes of your customer, orchestrating the customer experience across all channels so that it is seamless, integrated, and consistent. Omni-channel anticipates that customers may start in one channel and move to another as they progress to a resolution.  Making these complex ‘hand-offs’ between channels must be fluid for the customer.  Simply put, omnichannel is multi-channel done right!”  

Access to first-party data is crucial to omnichannel marketing

The ability to collect accurate, regulation-compliant first-party data via secure mediums can elevate a brand’s omnichannel strategy. This data allows you to understand when your target audience prefers to interact with brands and across which devices, the kind of messaging they respond to and engage with, and the products and features they are most interested in.

Omnichannel marketing campaigns are more successful with accurate first-party data. Also, you have a better chance of organizing your efforts to target specific buyers and reach them personally and effectively.    

Why is Omnichannel important?

The world of advertising and marketing is advancing, the third-party cookie demise has further changed the dynamic of how data was being collected and used. Privacy and compliance have taken priority and within this fast-paced world, having an integrated omnichannel strategy will help you design unique experiences for your brand irrespective of the platform.  Also, consistent interactions can lead to better customer experiences. And better customer experiences—combined with more engagement opportunities across channels—can result in more conversions.  

Third, omnichannel elevates your brand by being able to reach the right customers at the correct time and this can lead to optimized media spending and an increased ROI.  

2023 is a few weeks away, and we can already see ourselves planning for the new year. As the saying goes – ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ For the advertising industry, the tide is the growth of first-party data. The rise of first-party data can be directly traced to the phase-out of third-party identifiers or third-party cookies. So why is first-party data destined to be crucial to how brands design and execute their first-party data strategy?

To be precise, first-party data is the data collected directly by brands from their customers. And only the brand has access to the data – meaning that this data is not purchased through a data marketplace or distributor. A first-party data strategy indicates your plan for this data and it can be used to support your goals.  

Companies that use first-party data to their advantage capture tangible business results. Here is how…  

Build a lifecycle revolving around first-party data

Information that is shared directly by people with their consent provides brands with insight into their customers and this has a competitive advantage. While it may require marketers from companies to understand their data sources and the quality of data – it does have minimum regulatory requirements. Applications are another touchpoint that allows marketers and retailers to form long-term customer relationships that then can fuel results. 87% of retailers say that their app users are loyal and have a higher lifetime value than non-users, and this makes data from this channel crucial.

Measurement is key when we think of a first-party data strategy but is often not the case in other markets the world over. If you ponder a little more on the subject, measurement allows people to share their data in return for features that they value – Premium content/ offers. Testing this data allows people to identify the types of value exchanges that can lead to data sharing and creating a cycle around first-party data with customers. Research has validated that companies that link their first-party data sources can generate 1.5x the revenue from a single Ad placement or outreach as compared with those with limited integration with data.  

In addition, better customer experience demands better quality of data, and brands need to understand both individual and audience patterns in how users interact with their brand or product. Companies have been investing in data as their role in digital marketing grows. Respondents can compare how various categories of data perform for various goals. In addition, first-party data also promises to garner a high Return on Investment (ROI) and has the potential to do more.  

All this can be achieved provided marketers invest in a reliable first-party data tech that is regulation compliant and a privacy-first solution.

Ad blockers are softwares specifically developed to remove or prevent ads from being shown on a website. When online there are platforms that communicate back and forth (Data management platforms to demand-side platforms, ad exchanges, to supply-side platforms. This is in addition to Ad networks and Ad servers). 

Each time a creative is presented, the platforms must communicate among themselves 

• Browser to ad server via the ad request 

• SSP returns an ad markup that loads the creative from the winning DSP’s ad server

• The browser loads the creative from the CDN

And so on… 

This communication is marked using tags so that the different players can ‘pass control’ each other. And, at any point it detects a domain to block, it jumps in to do its job. Ad blockers may ‘hide’ a creative even after it has loaded onto a page, but usually works by blocking elements with labels that give clues on where they are being used for advertising purposes.  

The European Union has introduced new privacy directives and laws to regulate the collection and sharing of personal data – ePrivacy directive and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

Recently, attention has turned to anti-competitive behavior in digital advertising and marketing industries. As a result, the EU and the government in the UK have opened various investigations into major tech giants. In a similar attempt to bring in regulation, the EU introduced two laws to create fair competition and protect the rights of users in the EU. The Digital Marketing Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA) were created to assist the EU in achieving better regulation.   

Few points to remember: 

• The DMA and DSA as regulatory laws complement each other 

• The DMA focuses on fair competition while protecting the fundamental rights of consumers 

• The DMA aims to achieve this through regulation of large tech platforms, encouraging them to be ‘gatekeepers’ 

• The DSA focuses on the growth and competitiveness of businesses irrespective of size and protects users and their rights. 

• The DMA will have a bigger impact on the largest online businesses 

• There are new rules within the DSA and DMA that AdTech companies, publishers and advertisers will also need to follow to avoid being penalized  

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for the Internal Market, said during the official Press Release: “We are finally building a single digital market, the most important one in the ‘free world.’ The same predictable rules will apply, everywhere in the EU, for our 450 million citizens, bringing everyone a safer and fairer digital space.”