Ad Click Attribution – Everything You Need To Know

Alex Becker CEO/Founder of HYROS

Ad Click Attribution – Everything You Need To Know

Alex Becker CEO/Founder of HYROS

Hello, Hyrolian! What’s up? Hopefully, you’ve stopped by to get some awesome content and gain a better understanding of what does and does not make your ads work well for you.

Alrighty. So that being said, we’re gonna talk about ad click attribution today. When you’re trying to make the most of your ad spend and have the best ROI, you really need to get a handle on your attribution.

Let’s imagine it’s winter, and it’s really cold outside. (Just pretend, okay?) You are living in your brand-new house. You love this house.

Well, you did love it … until the temps outside hit below thirty degrees. Suddenly, your awesome house isn’t cozy. Your thermostat is set at sixty-eight, but it is registering sixty degrees in your brand-spanking-new house.

You know something is not right. You check the front door. You check windows. Everything is shut. There is no breeze blowing through any cracks. What the heck? Why would it be so cold?

You go up and check the bedrooms. Three of the five bedrooms are nice and toasty. This makes no sense. Why are some rooms staying heated so well and others are ready for Frosty to move in?

It’s time to figure out what’s happening. There must be something going on in the ductwork. Some of the ducts seem to send heat straight to where it should be going. Those ducts are doing a really good job of delivering the warm air.

If you can’t figure out why some ducts are working and some are not, you will keep turning up the heat and paying more for your heating bill. And you won’t fix the problem. You’ll just throw more money at it and hope those good rooms will carry the rest of the house.

To have warm air delivered to the right places, you need to know exactly why warm air is able to get to certain places and what is preventing it from getting to others. Otherwise, you’re wasting money.

See where I’m going with this? You should already know what you want your ads to do for you. The ads are supposed to be serving a purpose. And when you look at the conversion numbers of your campaign, you need to know exactly how those numbers add up, right? The answer is yes. Always yes.

So, you have got to understand ad click attribution. It’s not hard. It’s really not … but you can’t ignore it.

Ad Click Attribution is pretty simple. When a customer clicks on your ad and ends up being an official consumer because they made a purchase, then your online store and the search engine that was used both want to know that. Knowing where the purchase originated directly affects your marketing and advertising dollars.

Let’s get into it.

What does ad click attribution do?

It helps you figure out where you’re getting your sales. You can track the source of those lovely paying customers. Are they coming from Facebook, Instagram, through an ad that popped up while searching in Google, or from an email?

When you use ad click attribution you can track and examine each aspect of your campaign. It also shows you when people are expressing any kind of interest in your product. A click indicates that the consumer’s attention was grabbed enough to get them to the point of curiosity that makes them want to know more.

The Types of Ad Click Attribution Models

The main attribution models are first-click, last-click, and linear attribution models. Every other variation is based on these three.

First-Click Attribution

First-click attribution gives all of the credit in the journey to conversion to the very first channel a user clicks through. As you can imagine, conversions quite often occur after more than one touchpoint. It is typical for at least two touchpoints to occur on the journey to conversion.

You can think of a first-click attribution model as a model focused on introduction, meaning that this attribution model considers the most important point the very first time a customer is introduced to the brand.

Let’s say you have a consumer who is surfing the internet looking for running shoes. While they are surfing, they get a notification from Instagram. So, they pop into Instagram and start scrolling through their feed when a new ad appears.

This new ad is all about the cleanest form of protein powder with the most brain-chain amino acids for muscle recovery. Hmm … I need this for after my daily runs. Curiosity causes them to click on the ad to buy protein powder.

The credit for this protein powder sale will go straight to Instagram.

Last-click attribution

Last-click attribution gives all the credit in the conversion journey to the very last touchpoint that caused the user to click and make a purchase. Ecommerce Analytics prefers to use the last-click attribution model. It is also Google Analytics default attribution model.

Let’s say your customer is working on her laptop. She had Facebook open on a tab and checked it out to the point that she was doing a little doom scrolling. During the doom scroll, she spied an ad for a slimming belt. So, she clicks on the ad and checks out the slimming belt’s website.

She clicks out of the website without purchasing anything and continues with her work day. Later on that day, she sees an email in her spam folder for that nifty slimming belt. That’s when she decides to follow through and buy that slimming belt.

You guessed it. Every ounce of credit for this purchase goes to the email because it was the last click.

Linear Attribution Model

The linear attribution model is all about percentage equality. This model takes the conversion journey and gives equal credit to every touchpoint, meaning each touchpoint gets an equal slice of the pie. If there are five touchpoints, they are each given twenty percent credit.

Alrighty, so to further explain the linear attribution model let’s do one more example.

For this example, we’re going to say that Joe is on the hunt for the perfect memory foam mattress. There are so many choices out there. He has seen ads on TV, in the Costco magazine, on Facebook and Instagram, and then again in an email. That makes five touchpoints.

Joe finally goes online and orders the mattress from the Costco website. Every single one of those touchpoints gets the exact same percentage of the credit for that sale.

Choosing the Right Attribution Model for Your Ad Campaign

It’s not surprising that many businesses go straight to the last-click attribution model. In terms of the conversion funnel, last-click attribution shows favor to the lower part of the funnel. The lower part of the funnel is at the latter part of the conversion journey.

It’s in this part of the journey that people leave the curiosity and window-shopping phases. They finally move into the purchase phase. That’s the phase you want every user to reach.

The reality of last-click attribution models is that most users are going to just have ideas planted into their minds when searching the internet, listening to a podcast and catching a commercial, or seeing paid ads on social media. These users are much more likely to become conversions when they get emails or texts about the products.

When you think about it, it’s not super common for a person to buy something after hearing or reading about it for the very first time. Sure, curiosity may be piqued. But having the confidence to buy takes more exposure.

There are examples that seem much more complex, and frankly, a pretty typical path to conversion. But think about it. How many times have you looked at your Instagram feed, heard a friend talk about a product you barely noticed, and paid more attention to that product the next time it showed up in your social media?

Then, you signed up to get a text about it because you wanted a discount. You start getting texts with a discount code. And then you get emails about the same darn thing. But, you get distracted by all the ads for a three-day two-night trip to Mexico. So, you forget all about the other product you’ve been watching.

Two weeks later, you see that product again. And you finally decide to go ahead and buy it.

Which ad should get the credit for the sale??

That’s a great question. And there are algorithms floating around out there on the internet trying to figure out the perfect formula for tracking ads. None of them can grab every little piece of data or impression.

Needless to say, there is always room for improvement when it comes to ad click attribution. There are a few different ways that you can make your attribution models better.

Boost Your Ad Click Attribution Performance

Surveys: You can add a survey after the conversion/purchase is made. This is exactly what it sounds like. It’s simple. Ask your new customer what their reasoning was for making their purchase, and you can also find out how they heard about your business and what made them curious enough to engage with your marketing. This is the perfect time to learn exactly what it was that your customer appreciated the most about their conversion journey.

Promo Codes: Who doesn’t look for a good promo code when you are searching for a product online? It kinda feels like free money when you get a discount. You can hire influencers to offer their own promo codes for your product to their audiences. Promo codes can definitely be traced back to their source.

Use a Marketing Analytics Platform: You can use a marketing analytics platform to integrate every data source in order to gain further understanding of the success (or lack thereof) of your overall ad campaign. This is an opportunity to focus on both the upper and lower conversion funnel.

In the End …

You’re not going to find the perfect ad-click attribution model. It’s going to take patience and trying different tactics to see what works best. And then, it will require ongoing analysis and a willingness to adjust your strategy as needed.

When you are ready for a tool to track your ads so you can improve your ROI by at least 15-20%, give me a call. I will jump on a consultation call with you for free. I’ll take a look at what you’ve got going on and give you input.

The best tool for tracking ads is Hyros. Yep. I’m biased. But I stand by my statement. I’m so convinced it can help you improve your ROI that if it doesn’t improve your ROI, you’ll get all of your money back. So, it’s no risk to you to give Hyros a try.

Alrighty. That’s all for today.

This has been Becker of Hyros. Thanks for hanging.

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