ADVANCING

MARKETING
ATTRIBUTION
A Companywide Blueprint
for Success (Part 1 of a
Two-Part Series)
FEBRUARY 2019
Lauren Fisher
Contributors: Ross Benes, Nicole Perrin, Jillian Ryan, Tracy Tang
 ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR
SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES)
Holistic attribution, defined as the ability to understand how marketing and nonmarketing touchpoints influenced
a specific business outcome, is a must for measuring marketing’s true impact in today’s extremely competitive and
fragmented media world. But with less than 10% of companies capable of attributing holistically, it’s early days.

■■ Why are so few companies doing holistic attribution

Marketing Measurement: a Four-Level Hierarchy
today? Lack of companywide buy-in, lack of a true
business goal, difficulties in accessing the right data,
and problems with technology integration are just
Holistic View
some of the obstacles that keep marketers and their (understand path to purchase and
the consumer journey)
organizations from attributing in a more holistic way.
Multichannel
Attribution
Attribution
■■ So what attribution methods are most marketers (assign credit and optimize
marketing spend)
using? Most marketers remain stuck on the first few
levels of the measurement hierarchy. While the majority Campaign ROI
do measure marketing results in some fashion, only (brand-lift,
(brand lift, sales, etc.)
about half rely on either a marketing mix model (MMM)
or multichannel digital attribution solution. Audience Reach
(Who
(who did I hit?)

■■ How can marketers advance their attribution

efforts? Attribution is a journey, and there are
Source: eMarketer, Feb 2019
guideposts along the way that companies can use to 235174 www.eMarketer.com
identify what’s needed in moving toward a more holistic
practice. These focus on the state of their culture, data, KEY STAT: Holistic attribution is the most advanced form
technology and their desire for better measurement. of marketing measurement today, but we estimate fewer
than 10% of all companies have achieved this stage of
■■ Are there stories of holistic attribution success? their measurement journey.
Yes. We profile two firms, Adobe and Mindshare North
America (on behalf of a client), that are well on their
way to making holistic attribution work.

WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report discusses the current CONTENTS

state of marketing attribution. It shares best practices
for moving more advanced measurement practices 2 Advancing Marketing Attribution: A Companywide
throughout one’s organization and highlights two firms Blueprint for Success (Part 1 of a Two-Part Series)
successfully navigating this shift. 3 The Current State of Attribution
6 Questions to Ask
11 Putting It into Practice
14 Key Takeaways
14 eMarketer Interviews
15 Read Next
16 Sources
16 Editorial and Production Contributors

ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2
 THE CURRENT STATE
OF ATTRIBUTION
Attribution, that is, a method of assigning credit
to a particular outcome influenced by marketing
exposures and touchpoints, remains a stumbling
block for most marketers.
And for those looking to take advantage of more holistic
forms of attribution that can simultaneously account for
marketing and nonmarketing touchpoints, adoption is
nearly unattainable.
“Attribution is something everyone knows they need to
have, but they don’t understand it,” said Jeff Greenfield,
COO and co-founder of attribution data cloud C3 Metrics.
“And every company that is involved in the ad tech space
has now co-opted the word. It creates a significant
amount of confusion in the marketplace, and it creates
a lot of upset people who are dissatisfied overall with
measurement and where it’s at.”
As dissatisfied and confused as they are, 87.0% of US
companies with 100 or more employees use some form
of digital attribution today, according to our estimates.
But that portion includes all forms of digital attribution,
from the most simplistic forms such as first- or last-
touch, to more complex forms such as algorithmic or
holistic attribution.
US Companies Using Digital Attribution Models,
2018-2020
% of total
2018
54.0%
85.0%
2019
58.3%
87.0%
2020
61.2%
88.0%
Multichannel attribution models Digital attribution models
Note: companies with 100+ employees that use more than one digital
marketing channel; an attribution model is a way to differentiate the
respective contributions of various channels to a desired outcome;
includes first- and last-touchpoint models and more complex multichannel
models; multichannel attribution models are attribution models capable of
attributing marketing credit to more than one marketing channel or
touchpoint to differentiate the respective contributions of various
marketing channels to a desired outcome; models can include both digital
and nondigital channels and touchpoints
Source: eMarketer, Dec 2018
245233 www.eMarketer.com
ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3
The more sophisticated the form, typically the fewer
the number of companies that use it. We predict slightly
more than half of US companies will employ multichannel
attribution for their digital marketing efforts this year.
Multichannel attribution is an important building block for
any holistic attribution practice.
Attribution: Key Terms
This report focuses mostly on a type of attribution
known as “holistic attribution,” but many other forms of
attribution, both digital and nondigital, exist today:
Digital attribution: Includes attribution models that
focus on digital marketing exposures and the effects
they have on a desired outcome. These models are often
fed impression-level data, sometimes at the user level.
Some models offer real-time analysis that can be used to
optimize channel-specific efforts more routinely. Digital
attribution takes many forms; and it is sometimes referred
to as a bottom-up model.
Last-click or last-touch attribution: A type of digital
attribution that assigns full credit for a conversion action to
the last ad or marketing message that a user either clicked
on or was exposed to.
First-click or first-touch attribution: A type of digital
attribution that assigns full credit for a conversion action to
the first ad or marketing message that a user either clicked
on or was exposed to.
Multitouch attribution: A type of digital attribution that
apportions credit for a conversion action to multiple ads
or marketing messages that a user was exposed to. Often
referred to as MTA. Models deployed across multiple
marketing channels are known as multichannel attribution
and can include both digital and traditional channels
and touchpoints.
Within multitouch attribution models, there are various
ways to credit contributing touchpoints. These models
can be used either in a single channel or in multichannel
campaigns. They include:
■■ Linear attribution models, which assign equal credit for a
desired outcome to every touchpoint or exposure
■■ Position-based attribution models, which assign
customized weights for a desired outcome to every
touchpoint; weighting is typically determined manually
and not via statistical methods
■■ Time decay models, which assign the greatest amount
of credit for a desired outcome to the most recent
touchpoints; weighting is typically determined manually
and not via statistical methods
■■ Algorithmic attribution models, which assign weighted
credit for a desired outcome to every touchpoint, and the
weights are determined via statistical analysis; sometimes
referred to as data-driven attribution
Holistic attribution: A type of attribution that assigns
credit to both marketing and nonmarketing touchpoints.
Marketing touchpoints include both digital and traditional
media, which often necessitates that such models are
capable of combining multichannel digital attribution
models with marketing mix models. Nonmarketing
touchpoints may include everything from call centers to
merchandising information. External data sets such as
weather, pricing or competitive info are also commonly
factored in. Weighting is always determined via statistical
modeling. Such models are often generated with larger
business outcomes in mind (e.g., growing customer lifetime
value [LTV] or revenues) as opposed to channel-specific
outcomes (e.g., conversions, view-to-completes). Some
firms refer to this as unified measurement.
Marketing mix model: A form of measurement that’s
historically been used for traditional media planning and
budgeting purposes. Also commonly called MMM or a
top-down model. Unlike many digital attribution models,
marketing mix models look at channel contributions at an
aggregate level. Reporting is also less frequent than for
digital attribution; many consult these models quarterly or
yearly. Models may incorporate digital marketing data, but
it is often added in aggregate. These models also typically
pull in external influences affecting a desired outcome—
pricing, weather, competitor data, etc.
In an April 2018 poll conducted by performance marketing
software-maker Tune and affiliate marketing and
performance management firm Acceleration Partners,
45.3% of performance marketers in the US and UK said
they used multitouch attribution models. But roughly a
quarter also said they used linear and time decay models,
with 35.6% using position-based models. The survey did
not indicate whether these models applied to single- vs.
multichannel efforts. It also did not indicate how many
respondents relied on multiple models, which the data
suggests is likely, given that the portions add up to well
over 100%.
What Attribution Models Do Performance Marketers
in the UK and US Use?
% of respondents, April 2018
Multitouch
First-click
Position-based
Last-click 24.5%
Many companies also rely on MMM to gauge the effects
of their traditional ad dollars. A January 2018 poll of US
digital marketers conducted by Forrester Consulting
for Tune showed 55% used marketing or media mix
modeling solutions. An added 47% said they used
cross-channel or multichannel attribution, but the use
of attribution practices is likely not limited to these two
forms. Many mobile app and social analytics tools, for
example, also have built-in attribution solutions.
As discussed in our prior reports, the one-two punch of
combining multichannel attribution with marketing mix
models cements the foundation for holistic attribution.
While roughly half of companies tend to use one or the
other, far fewer have unified the two.
“Ninety percent of the CMOs we work with have a
goal of growing revenues,” said Ric Elert, president of
Epsilon’s attribution services arm Conversant. “A lot of
them struggle with this because it’s both online and
offline channels that really show the picture of all their
interactions with their customer base. Finding a way to
look at all of those channels and events under one central
identity is one of the biggest challenges.”
So just how many firms today are capable of holistic
attribution practices? Based on the hundreds of
interviews conducted over the past few years on this
topic, we estimate fewer than 10% of companies
are capable of attributing at a more holistic level.
But that’s not to say many more aren’t working toward
this goal.
HOLISTIC ATTRIBUTION
Holistic attribution is more a journey than a goal. Few
marketers may have achieved the elite “holistic” status,
but those working toward this goal also deserve credit.
Experts interviewed for this report emphasized this
point repeatedly, and many described the typical journey.
45.3% Most agreed that it’s ongoing and incremental. While the
43.2% descriptions of that journey varied slightly, many of the
necessary steps corresponded with the four stages of our
35.6%
measurement hierarchy.

Time decay 24.2%

Linear 23.2%

Source: Tune and Acceleration Partners, "Performance Evolution: Putting

the Brand Budget to Work," Aug 13, 2018
241878 www.eMarketer.com

ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 4
Marketing Measurement: a Four-Level Hierarchy
Holistic View
(understand path to purchase and
the consumer journey)
Multichannel
Attribution
Attribution
(assign credit and optimize
marketing spend)
Campaign ROI
(brand-lift,
(brand lift, sales, etc.)
Audience Reach
(Who
(who did I hit?)
Source: eMarketer, Feb 2019
235174 www.eMarketer.com
Is advanced attribution for everyone? Experts interviewed
for this report agreed that not all companies need a
complex attribution practice in place. Small businesses
engaging in limited marketing efforts with limited data
sets, for example, are unlikely to see value in advanced
attribution. Instead, experts recommend sticking to simpler
forms of attribution, conducting A/B tests and using test-
and-control to better identify what’s working, and then
optimize accordingly.
Marketers starting out on their attribution journeys
must first become comfortable with basic channel-level
reporting, be it frequency, likes, clicks or impressions.
From there, they progress from reporting on channel-
specific metrics to analyzing them. This is often where
simpler forms of attribution such as first-click or last-click
are introduced so that marketers can understand how
the basic measures tracked in the first level are driving
specific channel-level outcomes.
“You’re explaining how things are moving, and you’re
likely doing some simple math and simple statistics to
start to identify relationships that seem to be important,”
said Marc Vermut, vice president of market strategy
and marketing solutions at global information services
provider Neustar. “If you’re doing that, it means you’re at
least committed to believing that numbers are important
and can be used to make marketing decisions.”
The cultural importance of moving toward a more
outcome-based and data-driven way of measuring is
significant. It lays the initial groundwork for getting CMOs,
CFOs and other key decision-makers on board with
attribution. Marketers unable to get internal backing for
their attribution efforts are unlikely to progress to Level 3
of the measurement hierarchy: multichannel attribution.
ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 5
Implementing the tools, vendors or internal headcount
needed often requires budget, help from IT, participation
from business intelligence and collaboration to identify
the outcomes worth measuring.
For those already using multichannel attribution, the jump
from Level 3 to 4 is the steepest and most difficult. Case
in point: The portion of US companies using multichannel
attribution sits above 50%; the portion of those employing
holistic attribution practices is under 10%.
To get to Level 4, several things need to occur in addition
to solidifying company buy-in. This includes the unification
of MMM practices and multichannel attribution efforts, as
well as the addition of nonmarketing data. But how does
that happen? John Matthews, president at marketing
measurement and optimization firm Marketing Evolution,
offered four common steps he sees clients take as they
shift toward that holistic attribution view:
■■ Successfully marrying MMM and multichannel
attribution models. In the majority of these cases,
clients are already well familiar with one, if not both,
of these practices. “They already have experience
in measurement and technology around things like
mix modeling,” Matthews said. “So they understand
that they want to measure and assess how media is
working. They’ve been through that trip.”
■■ Using those insights to expand measurement from
brand metrics to sales key performance indicators
(KPIs) or vice versa. For those who are already
focused on brand health metrics, it becomes important
to also factor in marketing effect on sales. And for those
currently focusing on sales, now is the time to gauge
whether one’s efforts are actually moving the opinion of
the marketplace. “A major retailer might want to be able
to move brand love and understand how that moves
sales,” Matthews said. “Or, they might want to look at
holiday sales and understand how much of that came
from brand building.”
■■ Taking insights to the individual level, often
via integration with customer relationship
management (CRM) data and other profile
information. Here, companies are moving beyond
aggregated attribution insights to individual ones to
better identify performance among audience segments.
Are there certain audience groups or consumer targets
that are driving greater value to the business? If so,
companies will identify them here.
■■ Integrating nonmarketing touchpoints such as
store foot traffic data and call center data. According
to Matthews, fewer than 15% of marketers are at
this stage today, but those who are have actively
worked to integrate these data sets into the larger
attribution model. This allows them to see the true
effects of all marketing and nonmarketing touchpoints
on company-level KPIs.
The pursuit of a holistic attribution practice is about much
more than measurement and analytics. It’s a process
requiring companies to adopt the necessary tools and
technology, but it’s also about socializing this new way of
thinking across the organization.
The remainder of this report will focus on the core
questions that marketers must ask to climb up
the measurement pyramid toward a more unified
attribution practice.
This isn’t just about optimizing marketing investment
and driving greater customer engagement; it’s about
understanding how that relates to other exposures
such as the call center, in-store experience and other
business touchpoints.
■■ To embrace more data-driven culture. A new wave of
companies, such as direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands,
think more analytically across the organization. In some
cases, this can also be a byproduct of shifting to a more
customer-centric approach.
But to achieve these goals, marketers need grounding.
For many, that comes from having a universally embraced
company objective. Common company-level objectives
include increasing customer LTV or revenues. Driving
brand loyalty, advocacy and market share are also
common goals. These were just some of the metrics
marketers in North America reported using to benchmark
marketing success in an April 2018 poll conducted by
research and advisory firm 451 Research.

QUESTIONS TO ASK Metrics Used by Marketers in North America to

Measure Marketing Success, April 2018
Ready to unify MMM and MTA practices? Having % of respondents
trouble moving away from last-click models? Here Customer engagement 59%
are five questions to ask to successfully move up the Brand loyalty 56%
measurement pyramid.
Customer retention 49%

Customer spending 45%

What is my company doing today, and what does Brand market share 41%

it hope to do in the future? Data linking exposure to engagement 39%

Revenues by campaign 39%

It’s likely you already know where your organization sits
within the measurement hierarchy. But where do you Time spent in store 35%
want to be? Lead conversion 31%

Revenues by channel 27%

“Level 4!” might be a gut response, but remember,
holistic attribution requires steady progress. Still, Source: 451 Research, "Where Are We? A Marketer's Guide to Navigating
Location Intelligence" commissioned by Cuebiq, May 30, 2018
progression should be worked toward with a goal in mind. 238849 www.eMarketer.com
What kind of goal? That depends on the company.
It’s only once these objectives are identified that
Mike Finnerty, senior director of product management companies can organize their data collection, technology,
for marketing solutions at Neustar, frequently works with analysis and departments accordingly.
brands to answer this question. Most responses involve
one of the following three objectives: Who needs to be on board to make
■■ To move marketing from a cost center to growth attribution happen?
driver. Here, attribution proves the incremental impact
marketing has on broader business outcomes. The short answer: everyone that will be involved in
feeding data to the attribution model, analyzing that data
■■ To take a more customer-centric approach. We and acting on it.
frequently see this as one of the major motivators
for the shift to more advanced attribution practices.

ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 6
But, as most who travel this road know, getting buy-in
is not easy. Interviewing stakeholders on perceived
trends, challenges and opportunities for shifting to a
more holistic attribution practice is one important step in
solidifying buy-in. Another is gathering those parties early
in the process.
The second step is communicating the benefits of shifting
to this approach in a clear and meaningful way to everyone
in that room. “You need transparency and a sense of
shared goals and shared missions, rather than, ‘I’m telling
you to do something, but I’m not telling you why,’” said
Lisa Schneider, chief digital officer at Merriam-Webster.
Other stakeholders include:
The CEO, or some other C-level champion. As we’ve
■■
noted in prior attribution and customer engagement
reports, organizational adoption and buy-in are rarely
achieved without a top-down mandate. This is true for
attribution and aims related to customer experience,
and it’s true of larger innovation efforts. A Q1 2018
KPMG survey of 270 US executives responsible for
research and development, strategy or innovation
efforts at Fortune 1000 companies showed leadership
support was the most commonly cited enabler of
innovation. “The common denominator is the CMO
or equivalent who can speak in financial language,
marketing analytics and tactical activation language,”
Matthews said. “They have to be trusted by their
organizations, and the groups accountable for
marketing effectiveness in the organization need to
report to them.”
■■ A project manager. It might seem strange to include
this role, but a natural fit is someone who is expert
at rallying others, building products that suit multiple
stakeholders, and disseminating the proper information.
“The best clients have really strong project managers,”
said Mike Bregman, senior vice president and head
of data, analytics and technology at digital advertising
agency 360i. “That’s not necessarily their title. It can be
an analyst, a VP or an ROI [return on investment] expert.
As long as they’re able to bring lots of folks together
in a way that’s collaborative and sparks a healthy
discussion, that’s where you have the biggest success.”
■■ Channel-level marketers. These are the parties that
will be responsible for acting on the insights generated
by attribution models, therefore, their participation is
non-negotiable. “Upper management should set the
agenda and the expectations, but the boots on the
ground need to be there to help build the analysis,” said
ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 7
Ikechi Okoronkwo, managing director at advertising
agency Mindshare. “They need to be there talking
about the data that’s available. If the socialization of the
analytics is coming from only the top down, it usually
lacks staying power.”
■■ The CTO, IT or database manager. Who is also
needed on board? Those creating the plumbing
between all the tools, platforms and the model.
“Marketing needs to be well integrated with IT or the
database or customer records responsibility in the
organization,” Matthews said. “Those two pieces of the
organization need to speak very well back and forth and
get marketing the right data and third-party information
at the right time.”
A business intelligence or data science team
■■
or manager. People capable of generating and
understanding statistical models are a must to include
in this process. Skye Yang, associate director of insights
and analytics at global performance agency Neo, noted
that she’s not just seeing this role gain in prominence
at brands, but she’s seeing companies hire a greater
number of employees in these roles. A Q2 and Q3
2018 poll of US companies conducted by technology
research and advisory firm Constellation Research
supported this observation: 58% of US companies
cited data science as one of the next-generation skills in
which their organization was investing.
■■ Third-party experts, if needed. For some firms,
expanding business intelligence or data science teams
may not be possible, at least not at first. In these cases,
companies generally turn to consultants, attribution
vendors and their ad agencies (or a combination of
these) to fill those shoes. They will need a seat at
the table. “These are complicated algorithms to put
together,” said John Hoctor, co-founder and CEO at
TV ad analytics provider Data Plus Math. “It’s hard to
recruit this type of talent. You’re crunching massive
amounts of data and building a large infrastructure to
process the data. So, you either hire that talent or you
work with a third party that has already built this.”
■■ All other vendors and partners acting on the data
or supplying it to the model. Companies using
agencies, vendors or other outside help to execute their
marketing efforts must also make sure representatives
from each of those areas are properly on board. They
will most likely be acting on attribution efforts, so their
education and buy-in is a must.
Can my company’s current culture support in data. For many companies, this type of approach is
still common.
this investment?
A May 2018 poll conducted by MIT SMR Connections,
Having the right data, technology and buy-in means little
sponsored by SAS, found 45% of analytics leaders
if companies do not have a culture within the organization
worldwide said only sometimes or rarely did they
that will support attribution efforts.
champion the value and use of analytics. And 44%
claimed to sometimes or rarely incorporate data and
“Creating a culture and spirit of change that enables
analysis in decision-making. Further, slightly more than
individuals within the different levels of the organization
half said they understood insights presented by analytics
to execute on things is a key component of success,” said
specialists often or always.
Katrin Zimmermann, managing director of the Americas
at consulting firm TLGG.
How Often Do Analytics Leaders Worldwide Use and
Willingness to change, a culture that supports testing Champion Analytics at Their Company?
% of respondents, May 2018
and learning, and trust in data-driven decision-making
are required attributes for any company pursuing holistic Champion the value and use of analytics
19% 32% 30% 15% 4%
attribution—and digital transformation as a whole. Not
Seek data and analytics to support decisions 3%
surprisingly, many of these requirements can prove
19% 40% 29% 9%
challenging. The Constellation Research study found
Incorporate data and analytics to support decisions 3%
internal resistance to change, lack of executive support
17% 36% 33% 11%
and customer resistance were all challenges impeding
Understand insights presented by analytics specialists 3%
digital transformation efforts. And in the same study,
16% 40% 32% 9%
two-thirds of respondents cited changing the culture of
Credit positive business outcomes to analytics in
the organization as one of the biggest areas of concern internal messages or presentations
they face in their digital transformation efforts. 13% 29% 30% 20% 8%
Prioritize investments in analytical tools
11% 25% 33% 21% 9%
What Factors Impede Digital Transformation for US
Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never
Companies?
% of respondents, Q2 and Q3 2018 Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding
Source: MIT SMR Connections, "Data, Analytics, & AI: How Trust Delivers
Lack of talent to staff transformation projects Value" sponsored by SAS, Jan 8, 2019
61% 245043 www.eMarketer.com

Internal resistance to change

“The companies that have cultures that support and
58%
endorse decision-making from the top down seem to
Limited budget
have an easier time getting buy-in across teams vs. those
37%
that are more reliant on just the top talent to make all of
IT infrastructure
32% their big decisions,” said Joel Acheson, chief marketing
Lack of executive support technology officer at full-service agency The Shipyard.
20% “Any organization will be disagreeing about decisions and
Customers resistant to transformation directions. But if you’re on the losing end of the debate
19% about an important decision, and the decision was on
Compliance and governance the basis of something systematic or mathematical,
14% that’s easier to swallow than being on the losing end of a
Data privacy concerns decision based on someone’s opinion.”
8%
Other Many of those interviewed highlighted D2C firms as
5%
model examples of companies primed to accept
Source: Constellation Research, "2018 Digital Transformation Study," Jan 3, data-driven decisions across all aspects of the
2019
organization. “D2C companies really have it down to the
244408 www.eMarketer.com
third or fourth decimal point,” Data Plus Math’s Hoctor
But shifting to a more data-driven culture takes time, said. “They understand the cost to acquire a customer.
particularly when businesses have long relied on “gut They understand the cost of media. They understand how
feelings” or mandates from above that have little basis much each channel is working for them.”

ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 8
Such thinking is also becoming more common among
other brands, which are shifting away from buying
media based on upper-funnel reach and frequency
metrics toward more performance-driven outcomes.
“They’re starting to dial into the results,” Hoctor said.
“They’re looking at short-term ROI and balancing that
against the long-term equity of their brands, and that’s
transformational for some of these brands.”
But shifting culture and practices is easier for some. Jon
Schulz, CMO of ad tech firm Viant, acknowledged that for
larger firms plagued by more silos, this process can be
much more difficult.
“Sometimes the bigger the company is, the more issue
there is with information generated by one department
being shared with other departments—and therefore,
that information is not embraced across the organization,”
Schulz said. “The reason for this is often based on
how people are evaluated and rewarded within their
specific departments.”
We will speak more on the necessities of realigning
compensation structures in Part 2 of this series. But for
now, understand that reworking bonus and compensation
structures will be key for companies hoping to shift
parties from channel-specific metrics toward more
company-focused ones.
For more on D2C, see our January 2019 report “Direct-to-
Consumer Brands 2019: How Digital Natives Are Disrupting
Traditional Brands and Retailers.”
What data is needed, and what shape is that
data in?
Marketers who have already conducted data-mapping
exercises in preparation for the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) or have mapped their customer journey
for customer experience efforts are well-positioned
to answer this question, especially those in the
latter category.

Data Sources and Inputs Used to Create a Holistic Audience View

First-Party
Data —CRM data
—POS/sales data
—Loyalty data

Holistic
Identity Second-
Audience —Platform-owned data (e.g., DSP, DMP)
Graph Party Data
View
—Data co-ops/consortiums
—Media seller data
—OEM data
—Retailer data
Third-Party
Data

—Data resellers (e.g., transaction, behavioral, location)

—Panels/census data

Source: eMarketer, Feb 2019

227975 www.eMarketer.com

ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 9
For those who haven’t, it can be difficult to know
where to start. A journey-mapping exercise can be
extremely useful. It provides marketers with, among
other things, a complete list of potential customer
touchpoints. Marketers must then chase down a host of
first-, second- and third-party data sets associated with
these touchpoints.
First-party data is data owned by one’s firm. This is an
important data type that often includes information on
who customers are, what they’ve bought and what
their history is with a company. This information exists
in a variety of companywide databases. Marketers will
need to turn to their agency partners and vendors for
any second-party analytics and insights owned by these
parties. For example, a company’s data management
platform (DMP) might have important information on
customers’ behaviors or actions, either online or in-store.
Third-party data might also be needed to flesh out the
complete picture of performance. It’s through these
sources that competitive data, weather data and
additional behavioral data can be brought in to paint a full
picture of one’s performance.
While this exercise seems straightforward, keep in
mind that most firms are unable to access 100% of
the required data, at least in the forms they need. Data
from walled gardens such as Google and Facebook, for
example, can neither be exported from the platforms nor
linked back to a company’s existing user-level data graph.
While it’s not ideal, it’s not a deal breaker for attribution
either. It’s here that the concept of unified measurement
pans out, allowing marketers to take those aggregate-level
insights from Facebook and Google and input them into a
marketing mixed model.
“You don’t lose the ability to measure things like
YouTube or Facebook, because you’re able to look at
that on a more aggregate level within the overall mix of
marketing that a consumer is exposed to,” said Maggie
Merklin, executive vice president of measurement firm
Analytic Partners.
Most marketers do aim to bring insights down to the
user level where possible. To do this, identity graph data
is also a must, especially for those hoping to understand
customers across both the digital and physical worlds.
ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 10
“The idea of a single ecosystem powered by an ID is
something that a lot of clients are starting to embrace
internally, and they’re getting much smarter at it,” 360i’s
Bregman said. “But if they’re not talking to their partners
and their agencies, they’re in a lot of trouble. Agencies
need to be very transparent these days about how they’re
collecting data and using it to power a lot of these data
joins. Otherwise, you’re just stitching a lot of garbage
together, and you’re not going to get any value out of
these very expensive analyses.”
Data transparency and fidelity are key for accurate
attribution practices, and they cannot be emphasized
enough. Whatever data marketers feed into their
attribution efforts must be clean, accurate and compatible
with the other data sets. Here again, an expert in this
field, such as a data scientist, comes in handy. Data
integration best practices, such as considering whether
to join user-level data with aggregate-level data, must also
be minded. Recency of client records and nonmarketing
data sets, the validity of external data sources, and the
cleansing of digital data for nonhuman, nonviewable
actions are also necessary.
Data hygiene practices must also increasingly account
for consumer privacy and security in a post-GDPR,
pre-California Consumer Privacy Act world. Here, ensuring
data is procured with proper consent is mandatory, as is
the consideration of future targeting and segmentation
practices based on the recommendations from
attribution modeling.
Need help mapping the customer journey? Check out our
May 2018 report “Understanding Customer Engagement:
How to Map and Make Sense of the Metrics that Matter.”
What technology is needed?
Once the necessary data sets are identified, it’s time
to extract insights from them. But identifying and then
integrating all the required technologies is frustrating at
best and insanity-provoking for most. Companies aren’t
contending only with the fact that there is no silver-bullet
attribution solution. They’re wrestling with that reality
while also having to integrate whatever solution they
do choose with constantly evolving marketing and ad
tech stacks.
Once an attribution model is either built, bought or
created using a combination of the two, marketers must
then integrate it with their existing tech stack. Common
requirements to feed a chosen attribution model with the
information and insights it needs include:
■■ Tracking pixels, and a tag management solution to
organize everything. Marketers already using analytics
or attribution tools likely already have these in place.
Many interviewed for this report emphasized the utility
of a tag management solution in organizing all the
necessary tracking pixels and other ad tech tags one
might use, be they DMPs, customer data platforms
(CDPs) or data warehouses.
Application programming interface (API)
■■
integrations with all major marketing and
nonmarketing databases. Once the data required
to build an attribution model has been identified,
marketers need to access it via APIs and connections
with all major marketing and nonmarketing databases,
including their CRM, call center, sales database and
more. Those using single-vendor tech stacks may find
integrating the marketing components an easier task
vs. those relying on best-of-breed solutions. Regardless
of the road traveled, everything will need to merge.
■■ A massive data repository, be it a data lake, data
cloud or some other data warehouse capable of
ingesting massive amounts of unstructured data.
Before data can be fed into a model, it must first
be collected, organized and structured. To do this,
companies need to use a large-scale data repository. This
can be bought or created in-house. Of the US companies
polled by Constellation Research in Q2 and Q3 2018,
48% said they planned to increase their budgets for
big data by more than 10% in the next year; 53% said
the same for upping investment in cloud and SaaS data
solutions. But keep in mind, greater investment in such
tools will likely require a data scientist, or team of data
scientists, to properly organize and structure one’s data.
■■ An identity graph or ID resolution system. Marketers
today rely on a host of first-, second- and third-party data
sets, some of which are anonymized, some of which
aren’t. Some sets are user-level, others are aggregated.
To ensure they’re properly joining those data sets
and accurately attributing marketing credit in today’s
multidevice world, an identity graph becomes key. “You
can’t join data if you don’t have a key that matches across
data sources,” The Shipyard’s Acheson said. “You need a
way to match user IDs and anonymous IDs to generate a
universal ID that you can use to join data sources.”
ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 11
■■ A scenario planning and data visualization tool.
Attribution firms and data clouds may provide some
reporting functions, but experts interviewed for this
report expressed the importance of investing in data
visualization and reporting tools capable of taking
complex attribution outputs and translating them into
reports that can speak to all levels of the organization.
A data scientist might deal in coefficients, but the
CFO might want to see just costs. A CMO might want
weekly insights on LTV KPIs, but a channel manager
or agency partner might need daily reporting on
conversions. Here, such a tool can communicate the
real value of attribution to all levels of the organization.
Even more ideal? The ability for anyone, not just a
data scientist, to query and run these reports. “You
need something on the front end of those powerful
databases that’s almost consumer-grade,” said Greg
Verdino, managing partner and chief strategist at
content strategy agency Verdino & Co. “It needs to be
easy to use and easy to query, and it needs to present
data in a way that’s real-time and accessible by the
people who are on the front line doing the work.”
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
How are companies making the move up the
measurement pyramid? We spoke with two
companies about their holistic attribution journeys.
Adobe
Anthony Ching
Head of Product, Experience Intelligence Services
Where they were, and where they wanted to be:
Helping its clients with measurement and attribution
is common practice for Adobe, but this story is about
Adobe’s own attribution journey. Several years ago,
Adobe’s marketing team was using last-click attribution
methodologies. But such an approach was generating
inaccurate reporting and wasting ad dollars for its
business-to-consumer (B2C) efforts. To reduce waste and
better understand the effect that marketing was having on
company revenues, Adobe decided it was time to pursue
something more advanced.
“We were aware of the shortcomings of last-click
attribution,” Ching said. “There’s a lot of room for
double counting, and you’re not factoring in all the right
touchpoints. That inaccuracy was really our motivation to
move to an algorithmic, multichannel attribution solution.”
How they got everyone on board: Ching and his team
knew that multiple incentives were needed to shift
away from last-click. He also knew a lot of education
was needed to make it work. First, his team met with
various marketing stakeholders from the executive team
to convey the benefits of making this investment. These
discussions centered on the value of shifting to a more
holistic customer view, which then lets the company see
all touchpoints happening prior to a conversion—across
all phases of the journey. Ching and his team explained
that rather than just identifying the marketing efforts that
converted someone from a free trial to a subscription, they
could now rely on attribution to see which touchpoints
were driving pre-conversion activities, such as signing up
as a free member and downloading trial products.
“You need to convince the executives first,” Ching said.
“If they don’t buy in, then the channel marketing teams,
especially the ones that might be negatively impacted
by this new methodology, have no incentives to go along
with what you’re saying. No one wants to see their level
of contribution reduce. We spend a lot of time explaining
to executives why this is the right thing to do from a
methodology standpoint, from a technology standpoint
and from an outcome standpoint.”
One major selling point for executives was the ability to
now prove not only channel influence, but also channel
incrementality. Last-click and other nonalgorithmic models
use only simple, rules-based approaches to decide which
touchpoints influenced a particular conversion event.
But with an algorithmic approach (they used a machine
learning-based algorithmic approach), companies can
account for advanced factors, such as contrast and
recency, to calculate the actual incremental impact of
each marketing touchpoint on revenues.
“As a marketing executive, you don’t want to compare
just your marketing cost against your influence,” Ching
said. “You want to compare your costs against the
incremental impact on revenues at your company.”
After getting executive buy-in, Ching’s team targeted
two additional groups: those responsible for allocating
marketing budget across channels and measuring week-to-
week results, and the actual teams for channel marketing.
Here, efforts were more about educating teams on the
ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 12
benefits of taking a more AI- and machine-led approach to
attribution measurement and less about pitching them.
“It takes a lot more education and alignment, because
the results in each of these channels change once we
change the attribution mechanism,” Ching said. “Maybe
one channel will get more credit and one will get less.
So, people need to understand why this methodology
is better in order to get them on board. But you need
to distill it down to digestible pieces of information that
explain why this is the right thing to do and what benefits
they should expect in their channels.”
Such benefits, for example, included the fact that channel
managers would now be able to more frequently optimize
their campaigns, identify their best-performing creative
and more precisely understand which partners were
working, and which weren’t.
Data and technology requirements: For Adobe, the
necessary data and touchpoints weren’t hard to identify
after mapping its customer journey and tracking most
touchpoints for so long. Instead, the challenge was
finding a way to integrate all of these insights and data
sets into a single view. “You can’t do true multichannel
attribution if your data is not aggregated across different
channels,” Ching said.
To do that, Adobe built a centralized data platform
capable of aggregating the various data sets as needed.
Advertising data from Adobe Advertising Cloud, behavioral
data from Adobe Analytics, email data from Adobe
Campaign and back-end data such as purchase data
and in-product experience data (for example, Adobe
Photoshop activity) were just some of the data sets that
Adobe integrated into its data platform.
“We arrived at a 360-degree view of each customer and
his or her journey across different marketing and product
touchpoints,” Ching said.
From there, the team used Adobe Sensei (Adobe’s AI
and machine learning product) was used to develop the
algorithmic attribution technology. Development took
more than half a year to get the model’s machine learning
and analytical capabilities ready for primetime. Once it
came up with a model that everyone felt comfortable
with, the team then had to take those data and insights
and translate them into real action items.
“It’s one thing to have the scores generated, but what
really matters is that you can operationalize the outputs,”
Ching said.
Benefits: The ability to now view incremental impact of
all marketing touchpoints is a significant one for Ching
and Adobe. At the company level, the model now allows
Adobe to better optimize and allocate budget for media
planning purposes on a more regular basis and in a way
that drives incremental value.
“Now, if a VP tells us mid-quarter, ‘Hey, we have some
extra money to spend to drive additional results,’ we can
use our attribution results to inform where we need to
invest that money, and we can do it in an efficient way,”
Ching said.
And at the channel level, marketing managers have more
frequent insight into day-to-day campaign optimizations
across partners, ad creative and more.
Mindshare North America—in Cooperation with a
Multibrand Client
Ikechi Okoronkwo
Managing Director, Marketing Sciences
Where they were, and where they wanted to be:
Mindshare had a large, multibrand client that was
already working with its Marketing Sciences team to
build marketing mix models to measure the sales-
driving influences for each individual brand. The models
factored in marketing, nonmarketing, macroeconomic and
competitive data across the brands’ product portfolios and
geographies, making them very complex and robust. But
while these models were very sophisticated, Mindshare
identified an opportunity to better connect brand equity
to sales outcomes. By linking brand equity and sales,
Mindshare could help clients better quantify the long-term
impacts of advertising, and ultimately be more efficient
with allocating budget and optimizing marketing efforts
accordingly. The agency knew this effort could provide
both sides with an ongoing learning agenda that could be
updated with regular cadence of reporting and insights.
How they got everyone on board: Getting buy-in
from the client required a healthy mix of education and
demonstration of the potential value of this type of
engagement model. Okoronkwo and his team first made
their case with more basic questions to prove the value
in building a tool that could answer harder questions.
“We needed to justify the investment,” he said. “So, we
painted a picture of, ‘OK, you have five brands in your
portfolio, and here’s how they work together. If we do
X, this is how brand A performs against brand B. If we
do Y, this is what changes. We wanted them to see how
ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 13
everything affected their business and what it took to hit
their targets.”
In the past, reporting and analysis were typically provided
on an ad hoc basis. But to convey the value of moving
to a more holistic view, Mindshare worked with its client
to understand the decisions the client needed to make
each month. Questions included how investment in one
product affected another, how to best allocate funds for
the next several weeks, what the client’s risk vs. targets
would be for each month, and what effect a change in
media factors—such as switching money from one part of
the country to another—had on its business.
“We wanted to prioritize these questions before the client
asked them,” Okoronkwo said. “These are all questions
we ask about its business, and it’s important to act like
you’re the client and build a plan based on the data you
have. We then started collecting the data and running the
simulations every month. That way, all the stakeholders
got used to that internal cadence. And for us, there were
fewer fire drills.”
Data and technology requirements: Because the
multibrand company was a client, Mindshare already had
access to a significant amount of data it needed to build
a holistic model. But it didn’t have everything it needed to
fuel the model on an ongoing basis.
Having the above questions on hand proved extremely
valuable for Okoronkwo and his team to identify the
missing data sets needed to achieve that view and run
their analysis on a monthly basis. The team worked
with the client to integrate the necessary systems and
databases, where possible, to streamline data collection
and allow for a monthly refresh of the insights.
“There were some additional data points we asked for,
but for the most part, we were asking for data that went
into the model,” he said. “And they already had access to
that data, so it was a pretty straightforward request.”
In instances where data did not come in on a monthly
cadence, Mindshare found it extremely helpful to
have ongoing communication with the client to flag
any upcoming events, campaigns or influences that
would create the need to calibrate the model with new
assumptions. Creating variables for a new sales event or
product launch would be an example.
“We’re constantly building and scaling the scope of the
questions that we answer, which improves the models
EMARKETER INTERVIEWS
and helps us to support the client’s business in different
Joel Acheson
ways,” Okoronkwo said. “And it makes our lives easier,
Chief Marketing Technology Officer
because we can understand where they’re coming from,
The Shipyard
and we can work through it with them.”
Interviewed January 10, 2019

Benefits: Using Synapse (Mindshare’s proprietary tool

Brian Baumgart
for budget setting, optimization and forecasting) to drive
Co-Founder and CEO
this process brought benefits to both Mindshare and its
Conversion Logic
client. “Our conversations now are so much cleaner and
Interviewed January 22, 2019
so much more concise,” he said. “This decision-modeling
framework has really benefited our relationship with the
Mike Bregman
client and has also shortened the distance between a
Senior Vice President and Head of Data,
question and an answer.” Analytics and Technology
360i
For the client, this unified view now offers greater insight
Interviewed January 8, 2019
into the interplay among all its brands and marketing
programs; it also provides greater insight into the
incrementality of any given efforts. And with reporting Anthony Ching
Head of Product, Experience Intelligence Services
now happening on a more frequent basis, the client is
Adobe
able to better optimize its budget at both the brand and
Interviewed January 15, 2019
marketing channel levels.

Ric Elert
President
KEY TAKEAWAYS Conversant
Interviewed January 9, 2019

■■ Although most US companies gauge their success by

attributing business outcomes to their digital marketing Mike Finnerty
efforts, only about half do this with sophisticated, Senior Director, Product Management,
Marketing Solutions
multichannel models. And just 10% are attributing
Neustar
their results holistically across marketing and
nonmarketing touchpoints. Interviewed January 22, 2019

■■ Achieving holistic attribution status is a difficult, lengthy Jeff Greenfield

process that requires companies to progress logically COO and Co-Founder
up the marketing measurement pyramid. To do that, C3 Metrics
marketers should start by assessing: Interviewed January 10, 2019

■■ What is my company doing today, and what does it

Marty Greenlow
hope to do in the future?
CEO
■■ Who needs to be on board to make Ensighten
Interviewed January 18, 2019
attribution happen?

■■ Can my company’s current culture support John Hoctor

this investment? Co-Founder and CEO
Data Plus Math
■■ What data is needed, and what shape is it in? Interviewed January 2, 2019

■■ What technology is needed?

ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 14
 Pankaj Kumar Jon Schulz
Senior Vice President, Measurement Innovation, CMO
NBCU Insights and Measurement Viant
NBCUniversal Interviewed January 22, 2019

Interviewed January 28, 2019

Greg Verdino
Joe LaSala Managing Partner and Chief Strategist
Vice President, Marketing Verdino & Co.
Analytic Partners Interviewed January 11, 2019

Interviewed January 8, 2019

Marc Vermut
John Matthews Vice President, Market Strategy,
President Marketing Solutions
Neustar
Marketing Evolution
Interviewed January 16, 2019 Interviewed January 22, 2019

Preeti Mehta Skye Yang

Senior Director, Project Teams Associate Director, Insights and Analytics
Analytic Partners Neo
Interviewed January 8, 2019 Interviewed January 18, 2019

Maggie Merklin Katrin Zimmermann

Executive Vice President Managing Director, Americas
Analytic Partners TLGG
Interviewed November 20, 2018 Interviewed January 11, 2019

Ikechi Okoronkwo Alfonso Imbroda

Managing Director, Marketing Sciences Managing Director, Accenture Digital, Spain, Portugal and Africa
Mindshare Accenture Interactive
Interviewed January 14, 2019 Interviewed January 4, 2019

Juan Pablo Pereira

Chief Client Officer
Conversion Logic
READ NEXT
Interviewed January 22, 2019
Attribution Beyond Marketing: Using All Company
Touchpoints to Achieve a True Customer View
Andreas Reiffen
Founder and CEO Customer Experience 2018: Personalization Still
Crealytics Elusive as Marketers Seek Answer to Single View
Interviewed January 7, 2019 of Customer
Direct-to-Consumer Brands 2019: How Digital Natives
Lisa Schneider Are Disrupting Traditional Brands and Retailers
Chief Digital Officer
Marketing Attribution 2017: Five Best Practices
Merriam-Webster
Interviewed January 18, 2019
Understanding Customer Engagement: How to Map
and Make Sense of the Metrics that Matter

ADVANCING MARKETING ATTRIBUTION: A COMPANYWIDE BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS (PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES) ©2019 EMARKETER INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 15
 SOURCES
451 Research
Acceleration Partners
Ascend2
ClickZ
Constellation Research
Forrester
Fospha
KPMG
MIT Sloan Management Review
SAS
Tune

EDITORIAL AND
PRODUCTION CONTRIBUTORS
Anam Baig Senior Editor
Joanne DiCamillo Senior Production Artist
Katie Hamblin Chart Editorial Manager
Dana Hill Director of Production
Erika Huber Copy Editor
Ann Marie Kerwin Executive Editor, Content Strategy
Stephanie Meyer Senior Production Artist
Heather Price Managing Editor, Content
Magenta Ranero Senior Chart Editor
Amanda Silvestri Senior Copy Editor

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