Before the advent of sophisticated digital and online technologies, tracking of marketing campaigns was easier. Television, newspapers, magazines and radio were primary media channels and when consumers came directly to a store or ordered from a catalogue, it was simple to trace their purchase path. With a proliferation of technologies, customers now reach sellers through a myriad of sources – organic search, PPC, social media, email campaigns, media partner sites, QR codes, TV ads, group buying sites and display ads. In this era, therefore, attribution reporting is used by marketers to comprehend the miscellaneous touch points that customers have with their brand.

Instead of focusing on the last click – the click that brings conversions, such as a customer signing up for newsletters or finalizing a shopping cart purchase – attribution reporting assigns partial values to various and overlapping marketing touch points that customers interact with during the sales process as they move from awareness through to conversion. While statistics show that paid search advertising and search engine optimization still have a major share of online marketing budgets, customers also get influenced by a combination of social mentions, display ads, offline marketing, promo codes and traditional marketing channels, such as TV and Radio. Read more »