The modern Christmas season is defined in part by a flood of year-end consumer spending, but brands have to plan their spending year-round. Will 2019 be a tipping point for marketers in actually measuring how successful that spending was?
One of the oldest saws in the advertising business comes from department store magnate John Wanamaker. In trying to figure out how to best spend his marketing dollar he said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” Nearly a century later, the holy grail of what is known as “multi-touch attribution” (attributing results to all of the elements of your marketing spending) may finally help answer this question for today’s wannabe Wanamakers.
Of course, there is a caveat attached to any potentially game-changing pivot in the media world. Doesn’t it seem like the next vaunted technology-related breakthrough is usually just two years away? Unfortunately, it’s never two consecutive years. In the case of marketing attribution, however, we appear to be on the threshold of a genuine confluence of technological and business infrastructure development.
I spent some time discussing this topic recently with Jeff Greenfield, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of C3 Metrics, a company whose core mission is bringing attribution measurement into the center of marketing spending decisions. Although Greenfield and company have an obvious dog in this hunt, there is a good case to be made that there is some real light to see at the end of the attribution tunnel.
As Greenfield described it to me, the reasons are crystal clear why marketers should want a more reliable and trusted approach to attribution. As data scientists bring their expertise to bear in every walk of business, it’s not surprising that marketing leaders would have to deliver proof of the outcomes for what they spend. Greenfield notes that no one was expecting that from marketing execs years ago, but they certainly are now. And to get that outcome-oriented data, marketers want to see specifics on their own campaigns – generic information about how a media platform or publisher performs isn’t good enough anymore. And finally, the old scale-only game is done, whether that is in TV or digital platforms. Yes, size matters, but there isn’t enough of at-least-its-predictable TV advertising to go around (audiences are scattering), and buying a ton of digital doesn’t get you all of the brand safe environments marketers need. All of this drives the motivation for multi-media, multi-touch attribution.
Getting this attribution right demands finding the (or least “a”) magic data formula. As Greenfield notes, you got to collect all of the data that’s available “in real time.” For true multi-touch attribution, you’ve need access to spending data for offline (outdoor, print, and broadcast) as well as digital. And of course you’ve got to integrate all of this with an advertiser’s first party customer data and third-party purchase data.
But how do you know if the “magic” actually works? As Greenfield points out, there is no substitute for a client learning over time, testing multiple marketing spend models, changing spending, and looking at the impact of marketing changes on business results, whether it be sales or other key metrics. As one CMO client recently told Greenfield, “we have been beating the hell out of your team” for the last year. Greenfield says he loves nothing better than putting money into something no one at the client thinks will succeed – and then proving everyone wrong.
But you need a client willing to give the data a chance to work its magic. And one that is willing to make the investment necessary to see it through. Greenfield believes strongly that many marketers under-invest in technology, dedicating at least 2-7% of their marketing budget on data analytics, and maybe up to 10%.
When you can assign true multi-touch attribution, the results may well surprise people. Greenfield points out that despite the appeal of the media flavor of the month, “We are constantly telling people to go back to TV." He points out that TV “is still familiar to people” and when clients run campaigns on familiar TV shows, people will find them and connect. Not the world’s sexiest message, but at least for some clients, that’s the reality.
Greenfield points to two developments that he thinks will drive 2019 to be the “year of attribution.” The first is the unification of traditional linear and digital brand metrics (measuring viewers, viewability, clicks, etc.) with the multi-touch attribution systems. According to Greenfield the lag on such integration has been less about technological innovation than about lingering battles over brand safety and ad fraud, which Greenfield sees as inexorably moving forward.
The second key component for institutionalizing attribution would be a commonly accepted industry standard for when attribution is demonstrated. To Greenfield, such standardization has been a key to the stability of the TV advertising market for decades. After now several years of consideration, he points out that the most widely accepted “Good Housekeeping seal” of media measurement, the Media Rating Council, has drawn closer to a consensus view of when attribution should be considered as demonstrated. Buyers and sellers agreeing on what is and isn’t impacting actual business outcomes should help establish what Greenfield sees as a “foundation” of media buying going forward.
So the truth about the performance of media spending (and the buyers and sellers of that media) may be soon upon is. But as the fictional Col. Nathan Jessup might ask: Can the industry handle the truth?
