Google have announced their latest innovative software – Google Attribution – at its Marketing Next event in San Francisco (23rd May).
This new, free piece of software – Google Attribution – can pull in data from Google Analytics, AdWords or DoubleClick Search; providing a more integrated view of conversion actions across all channels and devices for attribution modelling and bidding information.
WHAT IS GOOGLE ATTRIBUTION?
A simplified version of Attribution 360 – the enterprise-level offering that came out of Google’s 2014 acquisition of Adometry. The new software consolidates with Google Analytics, AdWords and DoubleClick Search and doesn’t require any additional site tagging.
Advertisers can now link a Google Analytics account already associated with an Adwords or a DoubleClick account. Once the account is linked, Attribution will populate the channel performance data from the connected Analytics view. This new piece of software includes an offline conversion event, which uploads data to Google Analytics. It is now possible to compare models side-by-side.
WHAT DOES GOOGLE ATTRIBUTION AIM TO SOLVE?
Google Attribution is all about understanding the full customer journey versus the last click impact. The limitation with last-click is that it gives all credit to the user’s last touch point before converting. For example, if a user searches and clicks on an advert on a non-brand search term then coverts later from a brand ad click, only the brand ad will get credit due to the last-click.
If a marketer can’t see that a generic keyword was used first, they may lower the bid or pause the keyword altogether.
There’s obvious benefits for Google showing advertisers how their search and display ads played a role in the conversion path. This then brings us on to the second problem Attribution aims to solve.
HOW IS ATTRIBUTION UNIQUE COMPARED TO ADWORDS?
Google is always improving all of its features. Most notably taking AdWords from an exclusively last-click platform to one that is more flexible. Last year in September, Google completed the migration from converted clicks to conversions. Google have started showing clicks and conversion assist data from analytics before
This isn’t the first time Google have started showing clicks and conversion assist data from Analytics. We have found out that there is no possibility that a conversion action to a model other than last-click for conversion reporting and bidding until the previous year.
In 2014, the Attribution tool was introduced into AdWords, but for search funnels only. This means it only reports on whether users interact with multiple adverts from an advertiser. This doesn’t provide any insight into the interplay of ads with marketing efforts on other channels; unless data driven attribution.