At Google’s Marketing Next conference, a brand new marketing tool was announced. Google Attribution, which is still in its beta stages, will give you a better understanding of how your different marketing efforts influence your audience along their unique buyers’ journey.
What is Last-Click Attribution?
Last-click attribution is a method of website analysis marketers use to gain insights on their customers. When someone makes a purchase or fills out a contact form on your site, the last way by which they reached your site is credited for the conversion.
For example, if someone types keywords into a search engine, finds your site, clicks it and fills out a contact form, those keywords are attributed as the source of their “last click” on your site.
The problem with last-click attribution is that most people visit your site several times before being converted into a customer or contact. It doesn’t provide information pertaining to how they found out about you in the first place or how many times they visited before a conversion.
What Will Google Attribution Do?
Google Attribution aims to stamp out the tendency of marketers to rely on the last-click model. Rather, its intention is to provide insights about the earlier steps of the buyers’ journey.
By integrating with AdWords, Google Analytics and DoubleClick Search, data from all of your Google campaigns are bundled nicely into one comprehensive overview. Google Attribution uses artificial intelligence to assign a number value to each touchpoint between your website and its visitors, which informs you about the effectiveness of your ad dollars based on each of the aforementioned channels.
This multi-touch attribution model is nothing new, but this Google says this product will be far more accurate than existing software. Plus, it’s free. There’s no excuse for marketers to neglect multi-touch anymore.
When Does it Come Out?
Though it will still be in its beta phases, Google will begin rolling out Attribution across the globe throughout the summer of 2017.
Additional Notes on Attribution
Attribution 360
Google will also offer Attribution 360, which is meant for agencies running large-scale marketing and advertising campaigns. Priced at $150,000 annually, it will connect to more channels and provide more sophisticated reports than the free version of Google Attribution.
Offline Attribution
Google understands that the value of an online ad is also high in the offline world. In other words, someone who sees an online ad may not buy through the internet, but rather visit a physical location to make a purchase.
Challenging as it will be, Google will attempt to connect in-store purchases to online ads in the coming months. For example, if a retailer takes a customer’s email information at the point of sale, it can be imported to AdWords to provide insights on that customer’s path to purchase.
Once Google Attribution is available, pay-per click, remarketing and other ad campaigns are sure to become more laser-focused and effective.
