Fifty years ago, advertising decisions had to be made with a limited set of measures to guide decisions. Ad campaigns were chosen based upon the potential number of eyes or ears that might see or hear an ad, so measurements were based upon things like viewer ratings or total newspaper subscriptions. A lot of decisions came down to creative directors making a “gut call.” Everything was put in print, billboards, or on TV or radio because that’s just what you did. How did you know if a campaign was working? Generally, you noted if your sales increased and people said nice things about you. Concrete results were elusive.

But those days are long gone. Cookies, URL tags and website analytics allow marketers to track a potential customer all the way from discovery to sale. Google recently published a case study on one consumer’s path to purchasing a car, and there were 900+ interactions. With this massive amount of data, marketing decisions no longer need to be left up to chance. However, finding the right measurement can still be difficult. With all of these touchpoints, how do you determine the right mix of marketing to make the sale?

What’s it All About? Last-click, view-through (a.k.a deferred) and multitouch conversions

As any marketer knows, promoting your business needs a robust strategy. And depending on your intended audience, that strategy plays out in many different channels. As found in the Google case study, a shopper may go to your website, see a banner ad, click on a social post and search “dealers near me” all before they take an action that signals their intent to buy. As a result, a strong marketing and advertising strategy needs to take an integrated approach and simultaneously spread your message across many channels. But how do you find the right mix?

This is where attribution comes in. Being able to attribute an action to a marketing tactic can inform you which marketing tactics are successful and which you should continue to spend money on. With technology advancements, there are many different ways you can track advertising attribution, and many experts are still having conversations about which is the most beneficial.

Some argue that the most important marketing is that which makes someone act immediately. Last-click conversion attribution attributes the conversion to whichever marketing tactic caused someone to take action. Was it a banner ad click that led someone to fill out a lead form? If so, the banner ad would get the credit for the conversion.

Some argue that clicks aren’t the only option. Consumers might not know to click and instead use organic search to find the advertiser. In this case, the last ad viewed is what matters. These are considered view-through or deferred conversions.

Others argue that a customer taking action is the result of the sum of all of their previous interactions with a brand, including those where they might not have directly engaged. In these interactions, every marketing tactic that a customer came in contact with during their purchasing process gets a piece of the credit. This is known as multitouch attribution conversion.

Taking Digital Attribution One Step Further

Tracking attribution one time ended in the digital space. Taking action offline isn’t as easily attributable to online ad placements, but it is possible. Companies like CDK Global are thinking of ways to track offline actions back to their online sources. For instance, we developed our advertising solution to swap a unique, attributable phone number for the dealership’s regular number whenever a customer is delivered an ad placement. As a result, the last-clicked ad gets the credit for the attribution. In addition, our system takes it one step further and tracks the view-through conversion attribution to give a full view of the value of an ad placement. We even offer different attribution models for different dealership needs and recently expanded our capabilities to accommodate other dealer choice models like last-click only and multitouch conversions.

Making the best decision for your dealership

Ultimately, deciding which attribution model to use in your reporting depends on what your goals are as a business. In order to determine what you should measure, take a step back from crunching numbers and ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to evaluate which channels you should invest more money in with the simplest math, last-click only conversions might be the best answer. However, if you’re concerned with how your overall ad placement strategy is impacting your last-click conversions, view-through and multitouch conversions might be a better option. A best practice is to look at both models and use them as a guide for your decisions.

Whichever you decide, take advantage of your data and choose the attribution model that has the greatest impact on your business. Work with your advertising vendors to develop the strategies that best suit your needs before you brainstorm creative marketing. Attribution may be confusing, but cracking the code can mean huge returns for your dealership. Take your time to understand it and it will pay off in the long run.