What is Multi-Touch Attribution?

The customer journey isn't linear. When a consumer sees an ad for a product or service for the first time, they are most likely not ready to buy. It often takes multiple interactions with the brand before the consumer is ready to close the deal.

That being the case, which interactions contributed to the final decision? Was it the most recent paid search ad, downloaded material, or an email newsletter? Understanding the path to conversion and the contribution of each step in the process is vital to assessing performance and effectively allocating ad spend. Marketing leaders can use multi-touch attribution to track each step on the path to conversion, gaining critical insights needed for optimizing your sales conversion process. 

/// First, What Is Attribution?

Marketing attribution, also known as media attribution, is the process by which advertisers assess touchpoints along the sales path and attribute conversion to understand performance. The objective is to identify the most impactful attributes (i.e., channels and messages) in driving response. The process involves assigning value to marketing touchpoints, allowing you to evaluate the metrics and ROI connected to placements and subsequent user actions.   

It’s used to monitor the customer journey and determine what drives conversions. These insights help you adapt to changing consumer behavior while helping to continually optimize campaigns. Marketing attribution informs your budgetary decisions, showing which tactics and touchpoints are worth higher investment, and which ones should be eliminated. 

You can measure marketing attribution through single or multi-touch models, with multi-touch attribution (MTA) offering the most holistic view. Effective media attribution strategies require an analytics platform that is able to understand the incremental contribution of each touchpoint. 

/// Multi-Touch Attribution

A multi-touch attribution model levels up your capabilities. It collects data and aggregates  touchpoints across a variety of platforms, tactics and channels. Unlike single-touch methodologies, MTA provides insight into how distinct channels and platforms influence the consumer journey. By clearly understanding the path to conversion, advertisers can optimize ad spend and achieve higher ROI/ROAS without wasting their marketing budget.

According to MMA Global, MTA users report more satisfaction quantifying “the effectiveness of a large part of their marketing spend” than non-users. 

MTA Drives Long-Term Growth

Although multi-touch attribution provides visibility into short-term marketing performance, its impact on your long-term bottom line is undeniable. It assigns real financial value to each marketing touchpoint for granular, accurate results. Consequently, multi-touch attribution plays a vital role in future performance and your long-term performance marketing efforts.

MTA adds value through:

/// Full visibility: Understand where your ad spend is most efficiently invested and maximize your budget through strategic investments.
/// Data and analytics: Leverage data visualization and reporting tools to provide visibility into the full picture while achieving immediate wins.
/// Strategy efficiency: Quantify each channel’s role to streamline your next planning cycle for a seamless sales and marketing continuum.

/// How Media Culture uses Multi-Touch Attribution to Deliver for Your Brand

The path to conversion is complex. When measured independently, it is often difficult to conclusively determine which tactics perform best. Media Culture eliminates this uncertainty, allowing you to crack the attribution code and realize both short- and long-term value.

Media Culture’s approach begins with a close partnership between your team and ours. Together, we develop a brand response strategy that aligns with your business objectives and needs. Abacus by Media Culture® custom, web-based reporting dashboards provides high-quality, accessible, and understandable information personalized to your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Custom Strategy

Cookie-cutter KPIs and vanity metrics simply won’t deliver the insights vital to your marketing program. That’s why Media Culture believes in working closely with your team and learning who your audience is, inside and out. We identify the actions required to achieve your goals through in-depth research and consumer insights.

As your brand response agency, we continually personalize your multi-touch strategy through:

/// Research
/// Consumer insights 
/// Creative development
/// Media placement 
/// Comprehensive data and analytics

As we receive data and insights through multi-touch attribution modeling, we pivot where necessary, research further, and begin the cycle anew.

Personalized Results

The inability to translate campaign results into actionable insights is a core pain point for many organizations. Abacus by Media Culture® provides complete transparency through interactive, real-time dashboards. It offers high-level executive overviews and detailed performance analytics so you can view, understand, and convey results. 

/// Discover What Drives True Value

Through robust, raw data analysis, real-time campaign measurement, daily and weekly reporting with actionable insights, and ongoing marketing mix evaluations, Media Culture redefines multi-channel attribution. Accomplish quick wins and realize measurable, long-term gains by partnering with Media Culture.

Reach out to explore how your marketing touchpoints work in tandem to drive response.