Attribution Measurement Services
An important service we offer at NuSpark Media Group is media attribution consultation and management services to help you understand and maximize the potential of your marketing investments. If you’re dealing with complex marketing metrics or struggling to identify which channels are driving your business growth, our expertise and tools can guide you through the world of media attribution. We provide clarity and strategic insights to enhance your marketing performance by tracking the buyer’s journey and giving credit to influential media sources.
Maximize Your ROI with Precise Attribution
Do you know which marketing activities are driving your leads and conversions? Are you confident that you’re investing in the most effective strategies? With our robust attribution modeling, we’ll help you answer these questions with utmost certainty.
Whether it’s first-click, last-click, linear, time-decay, or position-based attribution, we’ll help you identify the model that best fits your marketing goals and customer behavior. Or go a step further with our advanced data-driven attribution, which leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to assign credit based on the actual impact of each touchpoint in the customer journey.
Understanding Attribution
Understanding the impact of your media efforts in a B2B or B2C setting is crucial to optimizing your marketing strategies. Two crucial components of this measurement are lookback windows and attribution settings. Both play a significant role in accurately attributing conversions and determining the effectiveness of your campaigns.
- Lookback Windows:
A lookback window is the period during which a conversion (like a sale or lead) can be attributed to a particular marketing activity. This window can range from a few days to several months, depending on your business cycle and the buying behavior of your customers.
To set an effective lookback window, you should consider the length of your sales cycle. In B2B marketing, the sales cycle can often be several months long, so you might consider a longer lookback window than typically used in B2C marketing. For example, if your average sales cycle is six months, you might use a lookback window of 90 days to capture all the interactions that contributed to the conversion.
Keep in mind that using a lookback window that’s too long can over-attribute conversions to your media efforts, while one that’s too short can miss important interactions. Adjusting your lookback window periodically based on data can help you maintain accuracy in your measurements.
- Attribution Settings:
Attribution models determine how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths. They play a key role in understanding the effectiveness of various marketing activities and optimizing your media spend. There are several types of attribution models, each with its strengths and weaknesses:
- First-click attribution assigns all the credit to the first touchpoint in the customer journey. This model emphasizes the importance of awareness strategies but neglects the influence of subsequent touchpoints.
- Last-click attribution assigns all the credit to the last touchpoint before the conversion. While this model acknowledges the final push that leads to conversion, it disregards the other interactions along the journey.
- Linear attribution evenly distributes the credit among all touchpoints. This model gives a balanced view but fails to weigh the importance of different interactions.
- Time-decay attribution assigns more credit to the touchpoints closer to the conversion, recognizing that these may have a higher impact.
- Position-based attribution assigns a majority of the credit to the first and last touchpoints and distributes the remainder among the others.
Choosing the right attribution model for your business largely depends on your marketing goals, customer buying behavior, and the complexity of your sales cycle. Many businesses use a combination of models or opt for data-driven attribution, which uses machine learning to assign credit based on the actual impact of each touchpoint.
Setting Up Media Attribution Models and LookBack Windows
Developing a robust media attribution strategy is crucial for optimizing your marketing efforts. It involves defining key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with your business objectives and selecting attribution models that best suit your needs. Attribution models determine how credit is assigned to different touchpoints based on their influence on conversions. Whether you choose a first-click, last-click, linear, or position-based model, it’s important to analyze the data and iterate on your strategy to ensure accurate measurement.
Paul Mosenson, Founder of NuSpark, will help guide you to which attribution models and lookback windows are appropriate for your business and offer.
Below are 3 charts we use to plan performance campaigns (click each image to download a PDF):
This chart helps us plan all of the attribution settings for each medium we test within our media plan. Each channel has its own settings and pixels, so we’ll ensure those settings are consistent based on our objectives.
This chart summarizes all of the conversion types we can track via digital channels. Views are via platform pixels. Click conversions can be compiled either from platforms themselves or from Google Analytics 4, using the GA4 attribution reports.
This chart takes all of the conversions being tracked; weights them, compiles them, then a true cost-per-conversion is determined; based on the entire buyer’s journey.
Here’s a simple example of attribution tracking with various models. Depending on the offers and timeframes, we’ll create a custom model for your business. The goal is to give credit to mediums that influence conversions as well as those mediums that generate the “last click” conversion.
