As we enter into 2018, Ray Kingman, CEO at Semcasting explains how various marketing tactics have resulted in the fall of such attribution models including cookies and the last-click principle.
Moving forward I expect that marketers will increasingly demand evidence in the form of metrics that prove that their digital dollars are returning results at, or above, the level of other marketing tactics. Cookies, last-click and modeled attribution metrics are fading fast. Brands and agencies realize that they don’t have to settle for imprecise ‘black box’ metrics to evaluate the sources of effective marketing. Rather than treating attribution as an afterthought, advertisers are already beginning to design both offline and online campaigns so that there is proof of performance and accurate attribution as a tangible and actionable campaign deliverable.
In 2018, emerging forms of deterministic attribution, especially as it is applied to multi-channel marketing, will be able to directly inform optimization and provide lift in ways that up until now could only be forecasted or measured in macro economic terms. A person’s digital ID applied to search, target-ready display, social, direct mail and to the point of sale completes the circle. We believe that the charade of last-click attribution comes to an end and that deterministic channel attribution will be a standard component of ad tech. Brands and agencies no longer have to guess about the linkage between a purchase, an impression and a store visit – deterministic attribution at scale.