Study: Use of multichannel attribution expands to 60% of marketers

Dive Brief:

The percentage of marketers joining offline and online attribution has risen to 60%, up from 45% in 2016, according to a new report released today by AdRoll and Econsultancy and made available to Marketing Dive.
The study found 81% companies use marketing attribution, with 70% reporting better budget allocation was the top benefit of attribution followed by 64% reporting a better understanding of how digital channels work together. Fifty-one percent of North American companies are applying attribution to all or most of their marketing activities compared to 39% worldwide.
Additional findings in the 2017 State of Marketing Attribution report include: single click – either last- or first-click – is the most commonly used attribution model; only 25% of respondents use a custom attribution model with 48% of these marketers finding it very effective; 59% of marketers who haven’t implemented an attribution model report lack of knowledge is the obstacle; and 71% of marketers describe their attribution model as very flexible or somewhat flexible in applying multiple models to data.

Dive Insight:

In an omnichannel marketing world where customers are engaging across any number of devices viewing ads, visiting websites, conducting searches and even starting an e-commerce cart on a mobile device but not actually checking out until hours later on a desktop or laptop. As a result, being able to attribute which marketing touchpoint helped contribute to a final conversion is key to understanding what is working, and what isn’t working.

However, there remain challenges with attribution, which is reflected in the report by the fact that only 51% of North American marketers are applying attribution to all of their marketing activities and 70% still struggle to act on insights, citing defining the online customer journey as the most significant barrier. The challenges also include a lack of understanding around attribution and as well as the ability to accurately combine data from across platforms to understand how a single user behaved. This year, there have been advances in matching online activity to in-store traffic and sales through the use of mobile location data, among other approaches, which is reflected in the growing number of marketers using this strategy.

Attribution is one of the hottest topics in the industry, said Shane Murphy, AdRoll VP of Marketing, in a statement. Murphy explained not using attribution or getting it wrong has “huge consequences” such as lost revenue and wasted ad budgets.