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The bit about attribution is critical, but misses a more important basic piece which is "make sure you setup and properly QA your conversion tracking." So many

The bit about attribution is critical, but misses a more important basic piece which is "make sure you setup and properly QA your conversion tracking." So many companies launch FB ads without proper tracking and then are surprised when they have no idea what it did for them. FB tends to group everything under the sun as "engagement" and "conversions", so really digging in and understanding those settings is key. For example, 1-day view-through credit by default is probably a bad idea for many advertisers, particularly when you have no clue what the quality of a view-through is, and what they are worth to you. They are VERY different in terms of value, but FB wants to give them 100% credit with their rules within 1-day. That's simply not how most savvy people approach attribution. Google Analytics offers some great basic attribution tools out of the box that let you experiment and compare different static models, or create your own static model. Ultimately static models themselves have inherent limitations because attribution is a much more dynamic thing that exists at the individual user path level, but it is a great start.

jamiequint 11y ago
Hey Michael! I tried to hit on this point in #5 at the end when talking about setting up attribution parameters. We tell most people early stage to go with 1 day click or 7 day click (depending on the business). If you get the chance to check out Interstate and compare it to GA's attribution tools for static attribution modeling I think you'll be impressed. We have a very generous free plan now (http://interstateanalytics.com/pricing http://interstateanalytics.com/pricing). We should have algorithmic attribution as a premium feature in Q3. Based on early testing the amount of data required to make algorithmic work is quite high. I'm still not convinced its actually a better solution for companies spending less than maybe $5m/yr. Would love your thoughts on that.
- shostack 11y ago
  Feel free to hit me up in Q3 once you have algorithmic attribution in place. I'm actively looking for attribution vendors this year that can tackle the dynamic piece of it. However my one concern from the limited info on your site is that you only focus on paid media data and don't integrate with other channels. I might be missing something though--like I said, limited info. On that note, a bit of unsolicited feedback on your site... I'd love it if you put way more info about your feature set and screenshots/videos on your site without an email gate or anything like that. The candid reality is that while I'm definitely your target audience, I typically have no time to field sales calls without knowing a bit more up front to prescreen. Your marketing site leaves some giant question marks for me as to whether you are even a potential fit, and I don't want to give up my email address and be added to yet another drip list just to find out. I certainly wouldn't just try you out to see if you met my needs because any analytics platform takes some level of setup and infrastructure work that I frankly don't have time for unelss I've determined you're a good fit. If you have something cool, figure out how to show it to me in as straightforward a way as possible, and don't get it. If I'm interested I'll reach out, if not, you probably wouldn't have sold me anyway. Also, given how important data and such is to us, your Privacy Policy didn't really do enough to address ownership of our analytics data vs. just our info as users of the product.
  - jamiequint 11y ago
    Curious what you mean by other channels, are you talking about email, etc or do you mean integrating data on organic activity as well? (we do both but mostly via just reading UTM tags/referrers). I do want to build a more comprehensive marketing site, we just have been time constrained on all sides and building out features has taken priority :) Thanks for the feedback re: privacy policy, etc.
    - shostack 11y ago
      Yep, I meant any other trackable channel. For example, DCM right now tracks ad data, but it also seamlessly integrates with GA (and GA Premium). From your site it appeared you just did the ad tracking bit, so I'd want to know how you're baking in other channels (organic, affiliate, email, etc.) and it sounds like for the most part you rely on explicit tagging (which unfortunately doesn't always do it for organic and referral). Beyond that, until you come out with an algorithmic attribution solution, you really should say more on your site about how you differentiate from GA. Right now I can upload all my cost data, etc. from other engines with no problem, so GA in theory does all of this, and has attribution tools.
      - jamiequint 11y ago
        Interstate already tracks non-tagged data in the same way GA does. The GA Model Comparison Tool is great for the basics but I'd hardly call it a comprehensive attribution solution for static models. Even if you import spend data (which you have to do manually), you can't get any sort of understanding of what payback periods actually were, just present day ROAS and how it differs by model. You also can't see revenue, spend, and # of attributed conversion in the same report, filtering is a pain, etc etc. It does the basics but not much else.
callmeed 11y ago
What are the best attribution tools for mobile (specifically iOS) campaigns?
- jamiequint 11y ago
  Mobile install attribution is an entirely separate thing from marketing attribution. As far as I am aware all the mobile attribution providers are just attributing the last click that led to the install rather than giving partial credit to each ad interaction prior to conversion. The list of common providers there is generally: AppsFlyer, Kochava, Apsalar, Adjust, and Tune (doesn't work with Facebook).
  - fbroder 11y ago
    Hi Jamie, I work at AppsFlyer. Indeed the attribution standard is by giving credit to the last click. However, our dashboard provides more insights by providing multi-touch attribution data, meaning assisted installs.
- shostack 11y ago
  I'd echo what Jamie said. You can get some visibility on the Android side of things since Google can stitch that together easily. iOS is trickier. TBH I haven't done anything with that specifically yet, so not sure how great the solutions are out there. I'm sure you could do something with statistical modeling, just like anything else, but you need lots of data for that (and a skilled statistician or firm who does this).

jamiequint 11y ago

Hey Michael! I tried to hit on this point in #5 at the end when talking about setting up attribution parameters. We tell most people early stage to go with 1 day click or 7 day click (depending on the business). If you get the chance to check out Interstate and compare it to GA's attribution tools for static attribution modeling I think you'll be impressed. We have a very generous free plan now (http://interstateanalytics.com/pricing http://interstateanalytics.com/pricing). We should have algorithmic attribution as a premium feature in Q3. Based on early testing the amount of data required to make algorithmic work is quite high. I'm still not convinced its actually a better solution for companies spending less than maybe $5m/yr. Would love your thoughts on that.

shostack 11y ago
Feel free to hit me up in Q3 once you have algorithmic attribution in place. I'm actively looking for attribution vendors this year that can tackle the dynamic piece of it. However my one concern from the limited info on your site is that you only focus on paid media data and don't integrate with other channels. I might be missing something though--like I said, limited info. On that note, a bit of unsolicited feedback on your site... I'd love it if you put way more info about your feature set and screenshots/videos on your site without an email gate or anything like that. The candid reality is that while I'm definitely your target audience, I typically have no time to field sales calls without knowing a bit more up front to prescreen. Your marketing site leaves some giant question marks for me as to whether you are even a potential fit, and I don't want to give up my email address and be added to yet another drip list just to find out. I certainly wouldn't just try you out to see if you met my needs because any analytics platform takes some level of setup and infrastructure work that I frankly don't have time for unelss I've determined you're a good fit. If you have something cool, figure out how to show it to me in as straightforward a way as possible, and don't get it. If I'm interested I'll reach out, if not, you probably wouldn't have sold me anyway. Also, given how important data and such is to us, your Privacy Policy didn't really do enough to address ownership of our analytics data vs. just our info as users of the product.
- jamiequint 11y ago
  Curious what you mean by other channels, are you talking about email, etc or do you mean integrating data on organic activity as well? (we do both but mostly via just reading UTM tags/referrers). I do want to build a more comprehensive marketing site, we just have been time constrained on all sides and building out features has taken priority :) Thanks for the feedback re: privacy policy, etc.
  - shostack 11y ago
    Yep, I meant any other trackable channel. For example, DCM right now tracks ad data, but it also seamlessly integrates with GA (and GA Premium). From your site it appeared you just did the ad tracking bit, so I'd want to know how you're baking in other channels (organic, affiliate, email, etc.) and it sounds like for the most part you rely on explicit tagging (which unfortunately doesn't always do it for organic and referral). Beyond that, until you come out with an algorithmic attribution solution, you really should say more on your site about how you differentiate from GA. Right now I can upload all my cost data, etc. from other engines with no problem, so GA in theory does all of this, and has attribution tools.
    - jamiequint 11y ago
      Interstate already tracks non-tagged data in the same way GA does. The GA Model Comparison Tool is great for the basics but I'd hardly call it a comprehensive attribution solution for static models. Even if you import spend data (which you have to do manually), you can't get any sort of understanding of what payback periods actually were, just present day ROAS and how it differs by model. You also can't see revenue, spend, and # of attributed conversion in the same report, filtering is a pain, etc etc. It does the basics but not much else.

callmeed 11y ago

What are the best attribution tools for mobile (specifically iOS) campaigns?

jamiequint 11y ago
Mobile install attribution is an entirely separate thing from marketing attribution. As far as I am aware all the mobile attribution providers are just attributing the last click that led to the install rather than giving partial credit to each ad interaction prior to conversion. The list of common providers there is generally: AppsFlyer, Kochava, Apsalar, Adjust, and Tune (doesn't work with Facebook).
- fbroder 11y ago
  Hi Jamie, I work at AppsFlyer. Indeed the attribution standard is by giving credit to the last click. However, our dashboard provides more insights by providing multi-touch attribution data, meaning assisted installs.
shostack 11y ago
I'd echo what Jamie said. You can get some visibility on the Android side of things since Google can stitch that together easily. iOS is trickier. TBH I haven't done anything with that specifically yet, so not sure how great the solutions are out there. I'm sure you could do something with statistical modeling, just like anything else, but you need lots of data for that (and a skilled statistician or firm who does this).