Hundreds of millions of dollars of wasted media investments are whittled away due to a knowledge gap regarding attribution among APAC marketers.
Custom modelling is the most effective form of media attribution, according to a new report from Econsultancy and Datalicious, but nearly 20% of marketers (16%) are not convinced of the business case for media attribution.
The first of its kind APAC study, revealed first by AdNews, found that two-thirds of marketers do not carry out any form of meaningful attribution and a knowledge gap is seen as the biggest hurdle to implementing a decent process.
A total of 41% of marketers say custom modelling is the most effective form of attribution modelling, compared to 15% that said the same of first touch or click modelling.
Christian Bartens, CEO of full-service media attribution solutions and marketing technology company Datalicious, said that attribution insights are a huge opportunity, not only for marketers, but creative and media agencies as well.
He added that custom or algorithmic media attribution platforms provide a more accurate and independent view of media performance as they act as a “single source of truth” - providing visibility, which forms the basis for optimisation discussions.
“Last click based approaches are simply out-dated and inaccurate in a multichannel world and can lead to ineffective budget allocations,” he said.
“If our hands-on experience from the Australian market can be applied to the wider APAC region at all, this could easily represent hundreds of millions of dollars of wasted media investments due to optimisation decisions being based on the wrong attribution approach.
“We will make it our mission to rectify this situation and this annual survey is a great first step in the right direction.”
The study also found that while 71% of marketers believe cross-device consumer behaviour is increasingly important, there's a lack of knowledge that stops marketing departments from actioning attribution implementation.
Bartens said despite a majority of marketers across APAC not doing attribution, it is encouraging to see these same marketers already recognising the benefits of it.
“Even though not all marketers are using media attribution yet, they understand the need for it and recognise the potential benefits - there simply is no better way to maximise the return from your media budgets, it’s a must have for every marketer’s tool kit,” Bartens said.
“A surprising amount of marketing dollars are spent on media placements that do not significantly contribute to driving sales. Eliminating this wastage - which can be as high as 10-30 % of media budgets - is one of the immediate and most obvious benefits of attribution.”
Results also showed that while Adobe is the most used vendor for first touch or click attribution, used by 36% of client-side marketers, Google and Datalicious are the preferred vendors for custom media attribution, being used equally by 25% of client-side marketers
Bartens added that media attribution matters to customer experience as over two-thirds of client-side marketers see insights into customers and customer behaviour as a major benefit of marketing attribution.
While first click (or first touch) remains the most common form of attribution modelling beyond last click, custom media attribution is the third most common form of attribution modelling.
More than 400 people took part in the survey from client-side (including marketers and ecommerce professionals) and supply-side (including agencies and consultants). Download the full report here.
In March this year Datalicious recruited former M&C Saatchi data strategy director Andrew Newell to a newly created global-facing role, to help clients get business objectives out of the data they already have. Check the story out here.
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