Are you being duped by de-duping?
No, is likely the answer. However, it has been apparent over the last few months whilst taking up my new challenge at Sky that many people do not understand the process behind de-duping and why it is carried out. I think there is a huge gap in understanding and communication between clients / networks / agencies and affiliates about the process and what happens. And to be honest I’m not surprised. It is not because it is complex, in fact it is a very simple process but the difficulties in transparency stem from the amount of data that it involves, especially when you start to look at post impression, we are talking millions and millions of touch points.
Why is de-duping necessary?
It is necessary in order for a client to attribute sales on a last click basis to one channel / affiliate. Because channels work on a different model, display on CPM (usually), search on CPC (usually) and affiliate on sale (again, usually) cross channel attribution is not for remuneration purposes directly, it is merely a function to understand your cost per sale across these channels. However, for affiliates it is used directly to pay commissions and is obviously vital to do when you have a large affiliate campaign across more than one network.
Is the last click model a fair view?
This depends on how you look at it. If you are looking at the last click in isolation then no, there will likely have been a number of other touch points prior to the last click that attributed to the sale. However, at present it is the fairest and simplest model to attribute a sale to a channel. At the A4U Expo I attended the eBay presentation with interest regarding their click value attribution model. In a nutshell they look at the time between the purchase and the click to define what value that click added to the sale. I think this is really interesting but is it right to necessarily say that a first click has less value to a sale than a last click? Would that sale have ever been made if the customer never saw the display ad that was the first click for example?
I do not believe there is a blanket answer for attributing sales. I think it depends on the decision making process the customer goes through, the product itself, the online marketing mix the client uses and the investment in each channel. There is a lot of talk about multi-channel attribution and I expect it to take place in 2010 but I don’t think there will be one formula, I think there will be a number of different models, which personally I think is the way to go.
What does this mean for affiliates?
I’ve always been concerned that as more investment is put into online marketing, on a last click model certain types of affiliate will lose out. These affiliates will tend to be content affiliates, who are adding value at the decision making stage. I firmly believe these affiliates are fundamental in driving online sales and in order to protect these affiliates a multi-attribution model needs to be looked at across channels, and within certain types of affiliates. I think potentially “last click” affiliates such as cashback and voucher sites need to be treated as another channel within the mix.
Lot’s to think about in 2010, which I believe will be a pivotal year in affiliate marketing. This however is a discussion that has been had across the affiliate industry for several years now, so why has no-one done it? It’s all about money, budgets and proving incremental value. Ever tried telling an accountant that you need to start paying more for sales that you are currently getting? Proving that it adds incremental volume is key to success, and to get that the whole affiliate industry needs to back it to work.