Lack of credible attribution renders marketers susceptible to pressure to invest in ‘favourite’ channels, with ‘maximising ROI’ just a pipedream paid lip-service
QueryClick’s latest survey of 200 senior digital marketing professionals covering UK retail, travel and finance brands slams current attribution models as ‘verging on useless’. Unreliable or false attribution leaves almost 90% of marketers afraid to invest in activities with any kind of long-term payback because of their inability to prove the value. Fewer than one-in-seven marketers find that adjusting their marketing investments based on attribution insights delivers the predicted results.
Overall, the survey reveals that marketers find current attribution insights tools are of negligible, arguably negative, value.
Digital marketing agencies – which often claim to help their clients maximise ROI – are also held responsible for sub-optimal ROI by respondents: a substantial 60.5% agree that agencies tend to over-focus on PPC because it enables them to demonstrate immediate results, even though doing so may not maximise ROI for the client.
Download the full report for the results, and highlights:
- The extent to which digital marketing decisions are influenced by factors that ought not to play a part
- The degree to which the digital marketer’s work is hampered by a lack of really good attribution models and solutions, no matter how big the companies behind today’s popular solutions
- Why this will mean that programmatic isn’t going to solve everything for you without fixing broken attribution
Chris Liversidge, CEO of QueryClick: “The survey tells us time and again that attribution is something done as a matter of course, but without much conviction, and rightly so: if the insights gleaned from historical analysis cannot help marketers to perform better ‘next time’, then the accuracy of that historical analysis must be in doubt. When we factor in that marketers feel under pressure from management and agencies to invest in specific channels, we might also speculate that pretty much everyone is aware that current digital marketing attribution is little more than an unacknowledged charade”.
QueryClick brought a Unified Analytics solution, Corvidae, to market in 2018. Using a completely new approach to attribution, it blends online and offline data, of any type or quality, using a patented machine-learning approach. It cleanses marketing data and reveals up to 334% more data for attribution than any other available solution. During its first pilot, Corvidae delivered a 37% media spend reduction and a £976k revenue uplift across £11.8m of multichannel media spend, giving an overall ROI of 40:1 for the client.
