Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy, Revised and Updated

CAN SOFTWARE ACCURATELY CALCULATE ATTRIBUTION?

Many analytics companies have been working to address the issues of attribution and return on investment (ROI) metrics for organic search. Can these tools help eBay with its attribution problem? Maybe. Richard Zwicky, founder of Enquisite, which had been working on this problem, said they had looked at using persistent and session-based cookies to understand the full visitor path, not simply the last click. They tracked what the visitor searched for before the last search, and they could weigh the value of the clicks themselves. They also attempted to relate value across channels. Just how valuable was that paid search ad in influencing the searcher’s decision to later do a brand search and ultimately purchase from eBay?

ClearSaleing is one of the many companies that have looked at tackling the attribution issue. Their Attribution Management Buyer’s Guide outlines their approach to calculating attribution across online channels, including both paid and organic search.10 As they note,

. . .many conversions are the result of multiple forms of advertising. For example, a banner impression leads someone [to] click on a paid search ad, then an organic search, and then they convert. If the solution you’re using is only able to capture paid search, it would be oblivious to the fact that the banner impression is what introduced that person to your brand, and that the organic listing is what eventually closed the deal.11