With the advent of new mobile devices and transformations in the ways people engage with media, the consumer’s seemingly linear path to purchase has evolved into a complex trail of online and offline touchpoints. This shift can be a double-edged sword: there are more ways than ever for marketers to reach their audiences, but it’s even harder to successfully do so.
Brands have traditionally used legacy attribution models, such as last-click or first-touch, to measure and optimize their advertising strategies. While these methodologies may have been standard practice in the past, today’s landscape requires a far more sophisticated approach that takes every marketing touchpoint into account.
Enter multi-touch attribution (MTA) which we spoke about previously. By analyzing a wider breadth of advertising channels and consumer behaviors, MTA provides a more comprehensive way of optimizing campaigns at a granular level, taking into account what is most beneficial for a brand and its specific objectives.
A new study from AOL Platforms’ reveals how multi-touch attribution is critical to understanding actual return on investment (ROI). The research brings to light the major inefficiencies that exist within advertising measurement and analytics and the steps marketers can take to bolster their strategies.
Additional key insights found in this report include:
- While digital marketing generates positive and healthy ROIs for all industries, the reported numbers vary by product category, advertising channel and brand.
- Media buyers can no longer solely rely on industry-wide ROI averages or paid media channel rankings to guide spending decisions.
- Industry and category results are helpful in providing brands with competitive context, direction and opportunity sizing, but only when broken down into ROI by publisher, placement, creative and keyword.
- A best practice for improving ROI should include multiple buying tools, an advanced MTA methodology and an advertiser’s first-party data.
To learn more about multi-touch attribution, how it works, and why it’s important to advertising success, download AOL Platforms’ latest research report, “Why Being Customer-Centric Means Being Data-Driven.”
