AdRoll has published its 2017 State of Marketing Attribution report in partnership with Econsultancy. Based on a survey of nearly 1,000 brand marketers and agencies across Asia-Pacific, North America, Japan and Europe, the report provides detailed insight into a marketer’s perspective on the changing dynamics of attribution. Now in its second instalment, this year’s report provides a global comparison, expanded from the European report released in 2016.
The customer journey is becoming increasingly complex and fast-paced with multiple devices and touchpoints. It’s essential that marketers understand the effectiveness of their campaigns and how each channel contributes to bringing customers to their businesses in order to effectively spend their budgets. To do this, attribution continues to be a top priority for marketers. AdRoll’s 2017 report shows almost four out of five organisations are using marketing yet 70% respondents still struggle to act on insights, citing defining the online customer journey as the most significant barrier to more effective usage.
“Attribution continues to be one of the hottest topics in the industry for a reason: it has huge consequences, such as lost revenue and wasted ad budget, if not done properly,” said Shane Murphy, AdRoll VP of Marketing. “The State of Marketing Attribution report gives a sense of how marketers are dealing with this challenging topic. Marketers are being held to higher standards of measurement and accountability than ever before, and attribution models have the ability to show the true impact our discipline has on the bottom line of a business.”
When asked about primary motivations of attribution, 70% of company respondents say better allocation of budget across channels was the No. 1 benefit; followed by 64% citing a better understanding of how digital channels work together. With the added visibility into where marketing dollars are performing across specific channels, 32% have increased their spend on digital marketing channels.
Some of the biggest attribution challenges facing marketers in 2017 are defining the customer journey (35%), attracting staff with the right skills (77%) and creating a culture of measurement and accuracy is more difficult for brand direct marketers (80%) than agencies (71%).
Key global findings from the report include:
- Single click attribution models are still the most commonly used (44% last-click and 39% first-click for brand direct and 58% last-click and 33% first-click agency clients)
- Of the 25% of marketers using a custom attribution model 48% deem it to be ‘very effective’
- 59% of marketers that have not yet implemented an attribution model, state a lack of knowledge is the the main obstacle
- Joining online and offline attribution is increasing, last year’s European report showed 42% of marketers were using multichannel attribution the 2017 global report shows 60% of marketers linking the two
- An equal 43% of marketers are using spreadsheets and vendor technology to carry out their marketing attribution
- 71% of marketers describe their attribution model flexibility as ‘very flexible’ or ‘somewhat flexible’
Download the Infographic below.
