Billions of ad messages are displayed daily to consumers, yet almost every online Attribution provider is suggesting we ignore display and only count clicks.

Why are they saying this … and who released the lunatics out and put them in charge?

Yes Virginia, the ultimate goal of Advertising is to persuade a person to take an action, action is today’s world.  But why only measure actions at the bottom of the purchase funnel, if you can accurately attribute everything occurring in the beginning portion of the purchase funnel?

But if you don’t have the technology — should you just ignore the seeds of the purchase funnel whether planted by display, email, affiliate, offline directed URLs , or search?  It’s the old adage of if you can’t measure it … you can’t manage it (or if your technology isn’t equipped to measure it, just cover your ears as the advertiser asks for better attribution analysis).

In the offline, we practice the proven premise that it takes a series of media impressions before a prospective customer makes the decision to either move forward and take that action or simply to ignore further messages (the ‘cum’).

Our measurement of these offline media impressions (print, billboards, television, radio and even non-traditional methods such as word-of-mouth from Buzzmarketing, branded entertainment or product placement) has always been handicapped to some extent by relying on ’estimates’ of audience size (Nielsen doesn’t measure every household and we know how many people subscribe to XYZ magazine, but not how many actually saw the ad that week).  But this is how it has worked for years and many brands have been built this way without any better tools.

Huh?  No interest in the seeds which led to that action?  The data is there, but is your attribution technology harnessing it?

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