The challenges to improving marketers’ attribution models are not primarily technological, according to Tracey Ruffin, director of marketing insights at marketing agency Latcha+Associates. Several products exist, which effectively tie together online and offline behavior to accurately assign attribution. The problem with improving attribution usually comes back to how marketing firms are structured, she said.
“Marketing departments are siloed,” said Peter Chun, vice president of platform partnerships and strategy at social media marketing firm SocialCode. “Marketers are not fully tasked to incorporate a cross-channel tracking solution across platforms, preferring instead to use a measurement solution optimized for only their channel. They are goaled on a short term, last-click ROI number, without any sort of controlled testing learn the incremental impact of each piece of their media mix.”