What is attribution?
Attribution basically means: If you have a conversion to connect it to a winning touchpoint. In other words: A sale will be attributed to a click.
In single attribution this means: If you have more than one touchpoint, the winning one will be chosen.
In multi touch attribution this means: If you have more than one touchpoint, the winning ones will be chosen.
The result: data of conversion + data of touchpoint(s)
Every conversion has data attached to it, like products purchased, an order id, order value, vouchers used etc. And every touchpoint also has data and meta data, like the type (click or adimpression), partner name, partner category, channel, subid, etc.
Remember: Attribution means selecting the winning touchpoint.
Attribution does NOT yet mean defining commissions - that is a separate step!
What is multi touch attribution?
Why going for multi touch attribution?
If you attribute a conversion only to one touchpoint in the customer journey, channels early in the customer journey rarely have a chance to be rewarded.
However, often there are good reasons to attribute costs or commission to multiple touch points within the customer journey.
So the idea of splitting the credit of a conversion across multiple touchpoints and channels seems fair and is a way to better reward channels like content or display that usually happen earlier in the customer journey than models like voucher that happen rather at the end of the customer journey.
So what does multi touch attribution allow to do?
Multi touch attribution means:
More than 1 winner touchpoint of an attribution is possible (multiple winners)
Commission is split among all winners (commission is defined per touchpoint)
Credit for every touchpoint is calculated in percent. So a total of 100% can be splitted among touchpoints.
Example: Every touchpoint of this customer journey should get an equal share of the commission:
100 % divided by 4 means:
Click, channel display: 25%
Click, channel content: 25%
Click, channel search: 25%
Click, channel voucher: 25%
Conversions with multiple winning touchpoints
Every conversion consists basically of two levels:
Conversion information (like order id, new customer, order value etc)
Touchpoint information: One or multiple touchpoints are winner.
Touchpoints refer to partners
Commissions are paid on a touchpoint level
Go to finance > conversions and take a look at conversions. The touchpoint icon already tells, if single or multi touch attribution was applied:
one winner (single attribution)
multiple winners (multi touch attribution)
clicking on the touchpoint icon reveals touchpoint details like
winning partners and ad spaces
credits (in percent)
commission
visibility for partner
…
Applied commission
Commission is applied on the touchpoint level. The formula for crediting multi touch attribution conversions is simple:
Credit x Commission (defined in the commission model)
Therefore, partners (more precise: relations with ad spaces) can have different commission models, also when working with multi touch attribution.
Example 1: same commission per winner
Conversion (Revenue: 100 EUR) with 3 winning touchpoints (33% - 33% - 33%)
Partner/Adspace “Voucher” (commission model Standard: 5%) = 100 * 0,33 * 0,05 = 1,65 EUR
Partner/Adspace “Social” (commission model Standard: 5%) = 100 * 0,33 * 0,05 = 1,65 EUR
Partner/Adspace “Content” (commission model Standard: 5%) = 100 * 0,33 * 0,05 = 1,65 EUR
Total commission = 4,95 EUR
Example 2: different commissions per winner
Conversion (Revenue: 100 EUR) with 3 winning touchpoints (33% - 33% - 33%)
Partner/Adspace “Voucher” (commission model Standard: 5%) = 100 * 0,33 * 0,05 = 1,65 EUR
Partner/Adspace “Social” (commission model Standard: 5%) = 100 * 0,33 * 0,05 = 1,65 EUR
Partner/Adspace “Content” (commission model Premium: 8%) = 100 * 0,33 * 0,08 = 2,64 EUR
Total commission = 5,94 EUR
Activating multi touch attribution
Go to trail > settings > tracking settings and activate multi touch attribution.
Please be aware: The activation of multi touch attribution is effective immediately.
Previous single attribution settings are deactivated.
The multi touch attribution manager
Go to partnerships > advertiser > manage advertisers and then open the multi touch attribution manager.
The multi-touch attribution model is a rule-based attribution model. It consists of several configuration properties and a set of rules. The different parts of the attribution model are explained in the following.
Choosing a base model
The base model is the model that is used to distribute credits among touch points based on their position, independent of individual properties of a touch point.
Linear: Each touchpoint receives the same share of credits. The credit is split among all touchpoints.
Time decay: The closer the touchpoint is to the conversion, the more credit it receives.
For most use cases, the base model Linear does a very good job.
Maximum Winner Count
If every touch point can receive credit, you want to avoid to give credit to a large number of touchpoints. After all, the commission will be split and if too many touchpoints were credited, the commission share may get so low, it would not make sense.
So we recommend to set a maximum count of touchpoints, that can be winners and thus get a credit. System default is 30.
Attribution Windows
The attribution window is the age or lookback window, where a touchpoint can still become a winner. In previous times (before cookieless tracking) this was also called “cookie time.”
If you want to define your attribution window, you may so so. Otherwise the default will be applied.
default attribution window for clicks is 30 days
default attribution window for ad impressions (views) is 0 days
Custom Rules (Attribution Model)
The custom rule defines how a total credit of 100% is distributed among touchpoints of a customer journey. The Ingenious attribution distributes the total credit by allocating parts of the total credit to particular touchpoints.
Credit is distributed by the use of functions. These functions can be freely defined in the multi touch attribution manager.
Functions
Functions allocate credits to touchpoints. Typically you will define multiple functions within an attribution model. The final credit of a touchpoint will be the combination of the results of all functions.
The Ingenious Attribution supports multiple types of functions. Each function type implements a different method of allocation.
The following table shows the different function types:
Type | Description | Example Usage |
|---|---|---|
Credit | Allocates a configurable credit value to touchpoints. | Multiply the credit |
CreditLinear | Dynamically allocates credit to touchpoints based on the time of a touchpoint and a configurable linear function. | Credit all touchpoints linear. |
KeepWinners | Keeps a configurable maximum count of winners. | Keep 10 winners. |
Condition Attributes
You can use the following attributes in the parameter "condition" to match touchpoints.
Name | Description | Data Type | Value Range |
|---|---|---|---|
requestType | The type of the request. | String | click, view |
deviceType | The type of the device. | String | desktop, tablet, mobile |
position | The position of the touchpoint in the customer journey | Number | 1-n |
positionFromEnd | The position of the touchpoint in the customer journey when counted from the end. | Number | 1-n |
adspaceId | The adspace id. | Number | |
partnerId | The partner id. | Number | |
adspaceCategoryId | The adspace category id. | Number | |
adspaceSubcategoryId | The adspace subcategory id. | Number | |
channelId | The channel id. | Number |
We have created examples of the most common attribution rules - read on here.