Good morning, Marketer, and is attribution going away?
I don’t suppose so, not literally, but something that has always been an immense challenge — not to say the focus of a lot of skepticism — is only getting harder. The variety and number of customer touchpoints, digital and physical (and hybrid: think connected out-of-home) is increasing exponentially.
“I spend some money on this channel, some money on that channel, and sales go up (or down). But why?” Of course, in recent years it’s been possible to get some kind of answer to that question by quietly following a user’s journey, from ad or landing page to conversion. That’s precisely the kind of invasion of privacy we’re all now supposed to disdain — and anyway, it’s about to get a whole lot harder.
Some are proposing replacing traditional attribution with a kind of always-on monitoring and optimizing campaign performance. It’s an intriguing approach, but I don’t think marketers will abandon traditional attribution until they’re forced to.
Kim Davis
Editorial Director
