Attribution Is Dead; Here’s How Marketers Should Be Tracking Conversions
6 Minute Read
Listen up: Attribution data is going the way of the dodo, and businesses and marketing agencies need to make adjustments right now to track conversions. Ten years ago you could’ve tracked every step in a customer’s journey and known just about everything about them—where they are, the type of device they use, and the channels that helped them convert. Now, the best you’re likely to get is the most recent marketing channel or ad they clicked.
Many different factors are killing attribution data. These include:
- Widespread adoption of ad blockers: More than one-quarter of internet users in the United States have installed some form of ad blocking software.
- Privacy laws: Canada and the European Union have enacted strict laws limiting companies’ ability to track and collect private user data. Several U.S. states have passed similar legislation.
- Removal of third-party tracking: Safari and Firefox block third-party cookies by default. When given the choice, the vast majority of mobile users will opt out of ad tracking; the launch of iOS 14.5 and its App Tracking Transparency feature saw 96% of users bid farewell to tracking within apps.
- Changes in user behavior: Native content is heavily favored on the places where we spend the majority of our time online (social media, YouTube, news outlets, e-commerce marketplaces, etc.). This has led to what Rand Fishkin calls “zero-click consumption” of digital content; we stay on our favorite platforms because all aspects of the user experience are designed to keep us from clicking away.
- Journeys across multiple devices: Consumers may interact with ads and marketing content on several different devices (laptop, smartphone, etc.). Unless they’re logged in with the same credentials on every device—which is unlikely—brands can’t track these multi-device interactions.
Google and social media platforms are contributing to this decline as well. From Google Performance Max to many social media sites hiding referral traffic, we’re simply seeing a lot less data to verify results. Marketing platforms are also starting to favor server-side tracking over browser- or client-side tracking. This can create technical challenges for organizations looking for reliable and accurate data.
Finally, the desire for data has created a marketplace oversaturated with tools for tracking every conceivable KPI. That’s way too many tools; you only need one hammer to pound in nails, not 10 hammers for every type of nail that needs pounded down. Unfortunately, the reliance many marketers have on these tools is making it difficult to pivot conversion tracking strategies.
So how are we supposed to make intelligent marketing decisions without robust attribution data? There are a lot of lessons we can learn from traditional media tactics.
How to Overcome the Loss of Attribution Data
Attribution data allows businesses and agencies to assess and identify the source of conversions. This includes leads, sales, and other key metrics. For years, marketers and advertisers have relied on this data to evaluate the success of their efforts and optimize conversions.
The continuing loss of attribution data is certainly a blow to successful marketing and advertising. It makes it more difficult to accurately quantify what strategies and tactics drive conversions, which makes it harder to optimize campaigns and maximize conversions. However, this does not mean the death knell of data-driven marketing or conversion tracking.
Now is the time to start kicking it old school. Specifically, companies and advertisers need to shift their focus from granular data on user interactions to the higher-level principles that guided marketing through most of the 20th century. Enter traditional media tactics.
Lessons of Traditional Media for the Digital Age
Bottom line: Traditional advertisers often had to rely on correlation rather than causation when they assessed campaign performance. They knew their audience, they knew their offering, and they knew their spend—then they had to compare these against results to measure overall success.
That might sound like guesswork, but it’s an approach we still use in media planning and buying to this day. Advertisers can set themselves up for success in tracking results without attribution data by focusing on the fundamentals underlying traditional media. These include:
1. Know Your Business Financially
Both retail and digital stores have daily sales goals that are further subdivided into average transaction targets. These KPIs have little to do with understanding the audience (the people visiting the store) but they have a lot to do with measuring the goals that support the bottom line.
Digital advertisers should take this same approach. E-commerce brands need to have a detailed understanding of what the average order should be to support their revenue goals. Service-based businesses must quantify the jobs they do to know how many customers they need to serve to be profitable.
When you know the financials, you can then calculate the cost per acquisition by determining how much you need to spend to drive the desired action.
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2. Know Your Audience
Losing attribution data doesn’t mean you can’t get to know your customers. Both traditional and digital media offer plenty of ways to understand your audience and target them appropriately. These include:
- Customer surveys (could be sent by snail mail, email, etc.)
- Market research
- Focus groups
- Competitor analysis
- Social media interactions and user characteristics
- Google Analytics data
- Advertising data; this may come from individual vendors or platforms like The Trade Desk
- Online form submissions
- Keyword research tools
- And more
Using these tools can help you identify your target customers. It won’t give you the same amount of minute detail you might be used to with attribution data, but it helps to ensure that your ads reach the right people.
Laying this groundwork is essential for controlling your ad spend and maximizing ROI. You might need to read between the lines more than you’re used to, but you’ll still be able to put the puzzle of conversion tracking together if you have a strong idea what the pieces look like.
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3. Budget for Ads Accordingly
Digital advertisers accustomed to detailed attribution data might feel like traditional media spending is akin to throwing money into a blackhole. At Twelve Three Media, we manage both digital and traditional campaigns. Our experience with the latter has given us valuable lessons for managing the former.
Proper budgeting is the key to aligning your budget with the results you want to achieve. Knowing metrics such as cost per lead and cost per acquisition enables you to accurately measure what it costs to drive conversions and confirm that your marketing and ads are getting the job done.
Attribution Might Be Dead, but Your Conversions Don’t Have to Be
Digital advertisers no longer have the luxury of getting data on every infinitesimal aspect of the consumer and how they arrived at a conversion. Even the last-click attribution model is less effective because more and more marketing is happening outside of clicks (think Google Business Profile listings, featured snippets, results from large language models like ChatGPT, etc.).
Marketers need to get used to taking a leap of faith in their media planning and buying. They need to have confidence in their brand, their products and services, and their consumer personas. Finally, they need to set clear goals and rethink their approach to analytics and reporting.
Instead of relying on a dashboard, you might have to start engaging in some inductive reasoning. An increase in conversions may be attributable to more than one campaign or strategy. Instead of fixating on the details, you’ll see much more success making sure your message reaches the right customers in the right place at the right time.