Latest news with #attribution
Forbes
24-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Do We Make Attribution Work In A World Of Data Privacy?
John Readman is the CEO of ASK BOSCO, which gives online retailers and marketing agencies the power of AI predictive marketing analytics. How we track, measure and attribute the success of marketing activity puts many marketers in a cold sweat—whether we're talking about top-level marketing mix models dating back to the 1950s or the complex, hyperpersonalized multichannel attribution models of today. The shift to digital has, of course, helped. With tools that can track customers throughout their journey, the process looks easier on the surface. But the truth is that the landscape has become even more complex. There's a skill shortage in attribution, and data privacy poses even more complex challenges. Data privacy laws already make handling consumer data a minefield, and there is little optimism that it will become easier. A 2025 Supermetrics survey of 200 marketers from around the globe revealed that 57% predict more difficulty in marketing attribution in the future. Why Attribution Is So Important Today It's worth emphasizing why attribution is more vital today than ever. Perceived wisdom, guided by the marketing rule of seven, has taught us that customers typically need to interact with a brand at least seven times before they decide to make a purchase. Today, however, the digital advertising landscape means customers interact with your brand much more often. Data compiled earlier this year shows that customers interact with a brand 28.87 times on average before a conversion. With that many touchpoints, it's impossible to understand your successes and failures without an effective attribution model. Attribution helps us understand how customers interact at each touchpoint and enables us to determine the effectiveness of each marketing method. With analysis, we can see which aid conversion and then decide how to spend money and resources more effectively in the future. The Challenges Of Attribution Historically, access to data has been a stumbling block for many marketers. You may be unable to access data because you're on a small budget, which prevents you from accessing the right measurement software, or you may have a team that lacks the knowledge to implement what you have. Or there may be a disconnect between sales and marketing—creating data silos that prevent useful data from being used to make smarter marketing decisions. Access to data is also changing due to user behavior. Nearly 33% of internet users now use ad blockers, which, along with blocking ads, also block cookies that allow us to collect and analyze user data. Data quality is holding many marketers back as well. Research by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and GfK in 2022 found that 62% of global marketers are only moderately confident—or worse—about their data. How Data Privacy Has Affected Attribution Since its implementation in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation has radically changed how European marketers use customer data. There are currently no federal laws in the U.S. that are as comprehensive as the GDPR. However, laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act have started an inevitable shift toward increased data privacy. Legislation like this makes businesses legally obligated to process data securely and limit how they share or use it with other organizations. That means considering things like data processing agreements, which establish your roles and obligations as well as those of any organizations you share data with. It also means implementing robust data governance—ensuring all of your consumer data is clean, reliable and consistent. While essential for consumers, these are all things that take extra time and resources for businesses to implement. There are also other areas of GDPR legislation that companies risk violating. One of the key tenets of GDPR is that data requests from users should be explicit and specific. Bundling together your requests with one checkbox is not considered compliant data collection. And the challenge of data collection post-GDPR doesn't just come from the legislation itself; it comes from users, too. According to GWI data from 2024, 34.5% of adult internet users globally now reject cookies at least some of the time. Attribution In A Privacy-Focused World The key to accurate attribution is still first-party data. Collecting your own customer data gives you control over compliance and privacy. While there are still gray areas with uncertainty about how GDPR legislation should be interpreted, this will improve as regulators provide more specific guidelines and enforcement increases. Businesses can ensure compliance in the meantime by implementing robust consent mechanisms, providing clear privacy policies and offering easy opt-out options for users. Once you have that data, the next challenge is using it. Like attribution, data aggregation has always been complex for businesses with smaller marketing budgets. But technology could hold the answer. Data lakes, for example, can make it easier for organizations to store, manage and analyze large, unstructured datasets. They can also ease privacy concerns by anonymizing data for analysis. While this advanced technology still requires time, money and expertise to use effectively today, artificial intelligence is making it more accessible for companies now and in the future. Machine learning algorithms can also help evaluate converting and nonconverting paths, giving relative value to each and making it easier for marketers to make decisions based on their data. AI can make working with different attribution models easier by combining deterministic data (e.g., logged-in user behavior) with probabilistic models to create a hybrid approach that better estimates cross-device behavior. It can spot patterns that may not have been visible to you before, and with the introduction of agentic models, it can apply insights to adjust budgets in real time and even make decisions on your behalf. So, while data privacy makes attribution more challenging than ever, it's a welcome challenge for those who value its intentions. Compliant data collection gives users greater control over their data and helps build trust that is sorely lacking in the modern consumer. Combine that with first-party data and new technology, and we can spend marketing budgets more effectively and deliver experiences to consumers that are truly personalized to their behavior, not just based on assumptions. Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
Globe and Mail
19-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Comcast Stock (NASDAQ:CMCSA) Slips Despite New Advertising Shift
Communications giant Comcast (CMCSA) is not the kind of operation to leave money on the table. So when it heard that a fairly large bloc of advertisers would be willing to spend more money if there were a way to better connect ad exposure to certain conditions, Comcast got right after it. Oddly enough, this was not good enough for some shareholders, who sent Comcast shares down fractionally in Wednesday afternoon's trading. Confident Investing Starts Here: Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter A new project, in conjunction with Marpipe and Mastercard (MA), is going to bring a set of new tools to advertisers' hands. With 63% of advertisers in a Comcast Advertising study noting that they would spend more if there was '…more attribution connecting TV ad exposure to specific consumer actions or purchases.' Comcast needed to hear no more, and got to work. Now, Comcast advertisers will have access to new tools, including the Comcast Media Solution feature, which now has support from Mastercard to allow access to 'beta testing sales lift' using a range of categories from automotive to home services. It is, essentially, a change in the way we look at advertising performance on television. Plus, many of these features—which were formerly only available to large-scale national advertisers —will now make their way into the local market. 'Personalized, shoppable ads' also become more available, which should produce better outcomes for advertisers. Given the fragile state of linear television viewership these days, Comcast needs to get more out of the bit of viewership it has left. Pushing Digital With Kids Meanwhile, Comcast is also eager to help the next generation of digital pioneers get started, and is putting money behind that notion. It gave a $20,000 grant to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Delaware, which will be put to the 'My Future' education program to enhance digital skills in the youth served therein. Given that there are over 40 such clubs in Delaware, the grant might not exactly reach very far. But the Boys and Girls Clubs were glad to get it all the same, with executive director of the Western Sussex Branch Jermane Duncan noting, 'Comcast understands the critically important role that digital skills play in accelerating career opportunities. This grant helps set our youth up for success both in and out of the classroom, and will strengthen our ability to support the next generation of leaders.' Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on CMCSA stock based on nine Buys, 10 Holds and two Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 8.77% loss in its share price over the past year, the average CMCSA price target of $41.44 per share implies 20.52% upside potential. Disclosure
Forbes
27-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Digital Marketing ROI: From Clicks To Causality
Rahul Wankhede, Director Data Science and Marketing Analytics, Humana. getty Digital marketing is an indispensable engine for growth. Year over year, big brands allocate a significant portion of their annual marketing budget toward digital channels and—with an ever-increasing digitally savvy and available audience—effective strategies can promise precision, personalization and reach. While it's easier to spend in digital channels than traditional ones, proving return on investment (ROI) at both the top and bottom of the funnel is complicated. That complexity is further amplified when you think of the impact on brand awareness or recall, which may not always yield immediate conversions. The real question is incrementality: Did the ad cause the action, or would you expect it to occur organically? To understand the trade-offs, think of measurement approaches as a funnel, ranging from simplest at the top to more complex—and possibly more accurate—methods at the bottom. With each layer, you can expect more rigor but also more stringent data requirements, sophisticated models, investment, deeper analytical expertise and patience. Here are a few different approaches for measuring the ROI of digital marketing efforts: At the top of that funnel is last-touch attribution, a model that assigns full credit for a conversion to the last interaction before the action. Since it's easy to implement and interpret, last-touch remains a popular method. However, the methodology ignores all other touchpoints that may have influenced the customer along their path to conversion. The method doesn't include the causal impact of interactions like first touch, linear or time decay. That's where multi-touch attribution (MTA) comes in. MTA attempts to use user-level data and models to assign fractional or partial credit to each touchpoint. The approach attempts to account for the full customer journey, offering a more granular view of performance. This method typically includes large volumes of granular data such as cookies, device IDs and timestamps across multiple channels. The model is also becoming more difficult to manage, with the world moving toward more stringent privacy laws and cookie deprecation. Ultimately, even with the data stack available, MTA is prone to bias. Some consumers who view your ads are likely to inherently be more engaged or loyal, while some may just be online more, potentially leading to overstated impact. Without proper controls, MTA could mistake correlation for causation. To supplement attribution, marketing mix models (MMMs) are a popular technique that leverages aggregated data—typically at the geographic and weekly level—to estimate the impact of marketing on sales. MMM can capture both online and offline media impact and is valuable when you add saturation curves to assist with long-term planning and budget optimization. While MMM does not require user-level data, which makes it resilient to privacy changes, results can skew heavily based on model specifications, assumptions and data quality. It also tends to smooth over short-term fluctuations and isn't necessarily useful for more tactical-level optimizations. Randomized control trials (RCTs) remain the gold standard in measuring the incremental impact of marketing. They work by comparing outcomes between a treatment group (those exposed to the marketing) and a control group (those not exposed), isolating the causal effect of the campaign. There are several ways to do this: • Randomization can occur at the market, geographic level or individual user level, where users are assigned to either a treatment or control group. • You can use synthetic controls after a campaign, which constructs a comparison group based on modeled data when a true control group wasn't established in advance. Running and implementing RCTs at scale, where reach remains such a crucial factor, is a challenge. You also run into issues with exposure bias; for example, being in the treatment group doesn't necessarily mean they saw the ad. Other factors, like viewability and fraud, can skew results. Conversely, control users might inadvertently be exposed to the ad due to retargeting, low match rates or media leakage. These issues can compromise the validity of the test. One solution is the implementation of placebo or ghost ads, which appear as real ads to the user but promote unrelated content, serving as a true control. With ghost ads, the control group is selected at the time of the bidding process, solving the question of ad exposure. This method requires a robust internal data infrastructure—including impression logs, user IDs, clean conversion data and analytical expertise. Many organizations don't have the engineering resources to deploy these tests at scale. Still, despite these challenges, well-executed experiments can validate and supplement predictive models, inform bidding strategies and answer key questions about channel effectiveness. When paired with MMM or MTA, RCTs act as a calibration layer, bringing rigor to existing methods. While much of marketing measurement focuses on conversions, upper funnel metrics like brand awareness, consideration and recall are equally critical. Though harder to measure, these indicators play a significant role in driving long-term growth. Surveys remain a primary tool to measure brand awareness, comparing consumer perceptions before and after ad exposure. Modern brand lift studies use randomized control designs to capture these shifts more accurately, while longitudinal brand equity trackers monitor changes over time to link campaigns with brand health. These methods offer insights that performance metrics alone can't answer, essentially the emotional connection with an audience the brand is trying to win. They also come with challenges: response bias, sampling variability and difficulty with linking surveys to actual exposure. Each approach—attribution, experimentation, modeling, surveys—has trade-offs. The key is integrating them into a unified strategy aligned with business goals, campaign needs and data maturity. Success lies in using the right mix at the right time, validating results without unnecessary complexity and building on insights over time. While machine learning will help automate and surface patterns, human expertise remains essential. The complexity is real—but so is the opportunity. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Zawya
27-05-2025
- Business
- Zawya
AppsFlyer promotes Sarah Maina to Regional Manager - Middle East & France to drive growth and cross-market synergy
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – AppsFlyer, the global leader in mobile measurement, attribution, and data analytics, today announced the promotion of Sarah Maina to the position of Regional Manager, Middle East & France. In her expanded role, Sarah will lead the company's strategic direction across two dynamic and fast-evolving markets, while championing cross-regional best practices and deeper client engagement. Based in Dubai, she will continue to oversee a growing team in the Middle East, now coupled with responsibilities across the French market. Sarah will report to Paul Wright, General Manager for Western Europe, Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey (WE-MENAT). 'Sarah has been instrumental in helping our clients in the Middle East navigate the evolving mobile landscape—from shifting privacy regulations to the explosion of new engagement channels. Her new dual-region mandate is both a recognition of her leadership and a reflection of the company's commitment to ensuring operational alignment across its global growth markets,' said Wright. 'With this promotion, Sarah is uniquely placed to ensure strategic coherence across markets, while adapting to the local nuances that define success. Her cross-market remit will be a catalyst for meaningful knowledge-sharing and stronger execution across both regions.' Sarah's immediate focus will include strengthening AppsFlyer's regional presence, helping clients across the Middle East enhance return on investment through smarter use of mobile measurement and analytics. She will also work to deepen partnerships with leading brands and stakeholders across both regions, bringing to life AppsFlyer's value proposition in an increasingly competitive digital economy. 'Every market has its own rhythm, but what excites me most is seeing how ambitious our clients in the Middle East are to scale globally,' said Sarah. 'Whether it's a retail app in Riyadh or a gaming start-up in Paris, they're all asking the same questions about performance, privacy and customer lifetime value. I'm energised by the opportunity to connect the dots across markets and help our clients lead the way.' Sarah joined AppsFlyer with a strong background in global partnerships and regional business development. She previously held senior roles at Tempr., where she was Head of Partnerships, Global, and at Singular, where she led Business Development and Partnerships across EMEA and India. About AppsFlyer AppsFlyer helps brands make good choices for their business and their customers with its advanced measurement, data analytics, deep linking, engagement, fraud protection, data clean room, and privacy-preserving technologies. Built on the idea that brands can increase customer privacy while providing exceptional experiences, AppsFlyer empowers thousands of creators and technology partners to create better, more meaningful customer relationships.
