5 key stats on last-click attribution measurement

“[Last-click attribution is] the devil marketers know,” said EMARKETER’s vice president of content Paul Verna. “It falls well short of representing what’s really going on.” Because it doesn’t paint a full picture, it doesn’t accurately reflect marketing’s impact on conversions.

US marketers will spend $302.77 billion this year on digital advertising, per an EMARKETER forecast. Relying on imperfect metrics to track campaigns and inform media decisions could lead to inefficient choices, like overinvesting in last-click-friendly ad formats that drive immediate clicks and underinvesting in marketing that leads consumers down the funnel.

To find out about marketers’ feelings on last click, EMARKETER surveyed 282 US senior-level marketers who spent more than $500,000 on digital advertising in the past 12 months. The results were published in Snap’s “The last days of last-click?” report, created in partnership with EMARKETER.

Here are five key stats from the survey:

1. Marketers use last-click attribution but aren’t happy about it. Most marketers (78.4%) use last-click attribution and web analytics to measure media efficacy, according to the survey. This metric attributes full credit of a conversion to the last ad a user clicked on before converting.

2. Just one in five (21.5%) marketers are confident last-click attribution is a reasonably accurate reflection of a platforms’ long-term impacts on business. “It's clear that while last-click measurement remains pervasive globally, brands and agencies trust these tools less and less in our fragmented and privacy-oriented media landscape,” said Darshan Kantak, senior vice president of revenue product at Snap. “Most believe that last-click limits their activation strategy, and is not the best judge of platforms' contribution. Three in four have moved away, or are working to move away, from last-click in favor of more holistic measurement strategies.”

3. Despite common reliance, most are displeased with last-click attribution. 74.5% are either moving away from last-click attribution or would like to do so. “It doesn't give the full picture of the consumer journey,” said EMARKETER senior analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf. “It over-attributes the effectiveness of that last touchpoint, whereas in reality we know that the consumer journey is more complex.”

4. 63.5% of marketers don’t think last-click is aligned with how people actually shop, per our survey. “The limitations of last-click are particularly acute when it comes to social media marketing,” said Verna. “A lot can happen in that customer journey along social media interactions that will influence a purchase or a purchase decision or a conversion, but it's not going to be measured by the last click.”

5. Last-click attribution is popular because it’s easily available, not because it’s accurate at identifying drivers of business value. Indeed, 77.0% of marketers think last-click attribution is the easiest—but not best—way to track campaigns.

Get the full report.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.