Digiday Research: Marketers still can’t measure attribution accurately

For marketers to make headway with attribution they need to overcome numerous internal hurdles such as integrating multiple data sources and accurately defining their customers’ journeys to purchase. It’s no wonder then that many continue to rely on last-touch attribution to award credit for a successful sale.

Major platforms play a difficult role for marketers when it comes to attribution. Though they are avoidable due to the scale of their audiences and the level of engagement of their ads, they’re notorious for restricting marketers’ access too data. While Amazon, Google, and Facebook have all released their own attribution tools for marketers, both Facebook and Google received significant pushback. Marketers have questioned whether data from the duopoly could be trusted due to obvious conflicts of interest. Given that Facebook had already admitted to providing incorrect video metrics, any skepticism marketers have is justified.

And of course, the General Data Protection Regulation could hinder efforts to improve attribution. Because consumers have to consent to having their internet activity monitored by companies, they can restrict the necessary technologies marketers use to measure the effectiveness of digital campaigns. To make matters more complicated, Facebook and Google further limit the audience data available to marketers to ensure compliance with GDPR. At this rate it could be years before marketers are confident in their attribution measurement capabilities.