As marketers seek the right mix of sites, channels and creative executions to engage consumers in a broadband-powered web environment, demand is growing for a measurement system that actually shows these channels’ contribution to sales.
The existing ‘last ad’ model of online measurement, which gives full credit for conversions to the last ad clicked, means that between 93 per cent and 95 per cent of a brand’s interaction with its consumers goes unrecorded and uncredited. The distortion forces marketers to place greater importance on the aspects of their advertising that support the model, diverting budget to channels at the bottom of the conversion funnel, such as search engines.
In fact, research from the Atlas Institute suggests that two thirds of consumers who convert viewing ads over more than one site prior to doing so; the ‘last ad’ lottery obscures the contribution of all but the last viewed ad in these cases. The statistics are further skewed by the number of consumers using search to navigate to sites that they already know they want to visit: 71 per cent of sponsored search clicks can be attributed to users choosing to navigate this way.
Why do advertisers settle for such an incomplete picture of the ROI delivered by different online channels? Because there have been few technological alternatives to the ‘last ad’ model – until now. The Atlas Institute revolutionised marketers’ understanding of online advertising effectiveness through ‘action tag’ technology showing the number of click-throughs to an advertiser’s site that actually result in conversions. Extending this approach through new bespoke, back-end systems allows advertisers to see all the online touch points leading to a conversion.
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