What is Attribution Modeling?

Attribution modeling is the method advertisers use to determine the value of different channels on their marketing efforts.

By assigning value for a pre-arranged advertising interaction to one or more publishers, attribution modeling helps advertisers determine which channels provide the most benefit to their marketing campaign.

What Types of Attribution Models Are There?

There are a number of different ways an advertiser can attribute users:

First Touch Attribution: This model awards credit for an advertising interaction to the first point of contact a user has with a campaign.

Last Touch Attribution: This model awards credit for an advertising interaction to the final point of contact a user has with a campaign.

Multi-Touch Attribution: This model assigns varying weights to different traffic sources for an advertising interaction, leading to multiple channels benefitting when a user interacts with a campaign.

View-Through Attribution: This model attributes specific impressions to installs, attributing value delivered by campaigns to ads that don’t directly lead to an install, but feature along the conversion path.

Attribution models can contain elements of each of the above. For example, a multi-touch attribution model might assign greater weight to the final point of contact. But this depends on what an advertiser decides to set up.

Why is Attribution Modeling Important?

Attribution modeling matters because it’s the way advertisers determine whether certain traffic sources are delivering value.

Without an attribution model in place, an advertiser can’t know where traffic is coming from, as well as in what quantity, which sources are delivering it, how much is needed to pay for it and whether it delivers a return in the long run.

But with modeling in place, advertisers can properly assign credit (and responsibility) to users from different channels. This helps to smooth commercial arrangements, and also helps the advertiser to easily analyze the quality of incoming traffic and make decisions about using those channels in the future.

Reference: “Adjust,” Retrieved – 23 April 2018