Solving the Web’s Attribution Puzzle

By that last-click standard, display would have gotten only 14 percent of the credit in the sample examined by C3.

“It’s a massive problem,” Hughes said, estimating between 30-45 percent of online media is “wasted” because marketers weight the wrong things and don’t spend in the right places that actually drive consumers to make buys.

C3 wants to change that by giving more weight to a conversion’s “originator,” which is a way of saying ads higher in the purchase funnel that build awareness. The originator ads can get from 25 to 65 percent of the credit for a conversion, depending on factors like how often the product or service is purchased.

This is a new front for Web advertising as it seeks to mature. The Internet has grown up as a direct-response medium, with search serving as the dominant form of advertising, particularly when compared to the amount of time people spend using it. Search could always take credit for conversions since it was typically the very last click in the chain before a purchase.

But several pieces of research and studies have challenged that. Microsoft rolled out an engagement-mapping tool that was meant to rebalance budgets in the direction of display advertising that was driving users to search in the first place. Other research from companies like ComScore found that ad clickers are few and far between — and clicks don’t even equate to brand metrics.

Sean O’Neal, president of Vizu, wrote in an email that the attribution problem would continue to bedevil the industry as long as the click is held in such high regard.

“Perhaps the biggest attribution challenge has been around brand lift, and the mis-attribution of brand advertising performance based on metrics like click-through-rate,” he said. “Of course there are countless studies that demonstrate the non-correlation between CTR and Brand Lift, but still, all too often marketers fall back into the habit (or addiction?) to metrics that might actually be leading to the wrong decisions. You don’t pick your pitching staff based on their batting averages.”

Old habits die hard, however. Hughes believes the click will remain a top measurement criteria until companies come up with viable, cost-effective alternatives. C3 isn’t alone in working on this. Google’s DoubleClick and other ad servers have attribution products, as do independent vendors.

“If you’re buyer, you gotta explain to boss or client that you’ve been wrong,” he said. “That’s a hard conversation to have. You’ve got to present a solution.”