There are a lot of really smart people out there who do attribution work. They use complex statistical models to try and tie orders back to the advertising that drove the order.
But attribution models have one fatal flaw ... they incorrectly attribute orders that would happen organically (i.e. without advertising) back to advertising activities, causing us to spend way too much money on marketing activities.
If you agree with me that we're over-attributing orders to marketing activities ... then give this presentation a read, where I'll share with you a mail/holdout methodology for properly assigning attribution rules.
How did you come up with the attribution rules (for example the one about "Attribute $1.00 of every $4.75 online to the catalog (21% of online dollars)"? From the hold out test?
ReplyDeleteYou bet, that's exactly where the results came from! And when they come from a controlled experiment, then you can trust them a whole lot more.
ReplyDeleteKevin - From the numbers shown?
ReplyDeletePages 11, 12, and 17 have all of the numbers that source the comments in the presentation.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Kevin