Facing the Challenge of Attribution. An Interview with Nielsen’s Matthew Krepsik

For many in marketing, deploying multi-touch attribution is more of an aspiration than a current reality, but that doesn’t mean we should defer efforts to find a complete attribution solution. There are many considerations when constructing a workable model, including variations in the consumer journey based on products and categories, the impact of unmeasurable factors like word of mouth and the ceaselessly expanding choice of datasets — some valuable and some, depending on the advertiser and category, not so much.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Matthew Krepsik, Global Head of Analytics for Nielsen to talk more about facing the challenge of attribution.

Charlene Weisler: Nielsen has always been proud that they own their data. Can you talk about the new reality where Nielsen will need to go beyond their own data and partner with other data suppliers who, in turn, control their own datasets?

Matthew Krepsik: From our point of view, we have a lot of unique and valuable data, just like other suppliers with walled gardens have incredibly valuable data. What we see as the biggest opportunity is our ability to co-mingle those data sets. If we think about our constituents and our users, whether marketers or  other business executives, what they really want is greater intelligence. We understand the complementary nature of all of these datasets and we can bring them together for specific use cases and help in enabling desired outcomes. This is where we generate the most value. As we think about the next generation of growth and innovation as a company, we think that the innovation stems from building across different partners. We have opened up access to our data with partners to make it easier to use and more permissible for marketers and brand owners across the value chain and in places where we don’t operate.

Weisler: How do you manage the de-duplication of data when you use other walled garden datasets?

Krepsik: There are a couple of dimensions of de-duplication around identity, around devices and around the cookie itself. So if you think about the ad model side, the ad tech really starts with the cookie. Your phone right now probably has more than 50 or 100 cookies on it. All of those cookies roll into a device. That device has to roll into other devices. So de-duplication is improving right now. Is it perfect? Not at all. But the first challenge is getting from cookies to devices and devices to people. I would say that we are getting more robust at the device level. The challenge is that they keep reinventing and updating the device. Every customer is getting a new phone. They are getting new laptops. They are getting new devices at home. Most households get new devices about every six months. So the challenge is that we have gone past the period of “build” and we have to constantly reinvest in the updating. The technology we have makes it easier to do this than ever before. The bigger challenge is de-duplicating your on-boarding data. That gives us a tremendous opportunity to get better at connecting to a digital consumer from an offline consumer. There is still a lot of work to do there.

Weisler: Looking at multi-touch attribution, where do you see it today, grading it from A to F?

Krepsik: I am going to answer this question along two dimensions. When I think about the overall need of a marketer or a CMO, I would give most attribution models a grade of D. If I think about the overall need for digital media planning, I think attribution models today are approaching a B+ / A- grade.

I say this because for a digital media manager, what you really want to know is whether this creative, or this site, or this device, or this placement working better than another one? Is this audience working better than another one? How do I make decisions and trade-offs across all of the possibilities out there? Today’s attribution models are really good at allowing digital owners to understand the cornucopia of media channels and how they can get more improvement out of them.

That being said, from an overall CMO standpoint, out of every revenue dollar that goes to the cash register, 25 cents is spent back on some form of marketing investment. Digital is only two cents of that quarter. So what they want to know is “should I be spending three cents on digital or should I be spending one cent on digital?” If you think about most attribution models today, they are not expressly measuring incrementality. They are not taking into account a lot of the “last mile” problems.

Weisler: Where do you see attribution going in the next couple of years?

Krepsik: Where I think the attribution industry has a chance to grow and where the marketing mix industry can take a step forward is bringing those two pieces together. Attribution models bring speed and granularity together and the marketing mix world offers scale and coverage. Where I see the industry going in the next two years is that both of those pieces come together; Leveraging the technology, real-time nature, and granularity in the attribution model with the scale, coverage, and sophistication of marketing mix modeling.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Finding Solutions at the Attribution Accelerator Conference

The perfect attribution model, in my opinion, is a chimera. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t hold out hope for an industry multi-touch attribution model that, even if not perfect, is considered pretty good. This past week, executives from data and analytics companies to advertisers and content providers met to exchange pretty good ideas at the Attribution Accelerator Conference in NYC.

The conference strove to present attribution solutions for marketing measurement.  “Attribution is the hot spot,” stated Alice Sylvester, Partner, Sequent Partners, who added, “The development of a unified approach is taking place. We are now focusing on data and data quality and have a more practical, more analytical orientation this year.” But the path to a generally accepted attribution model may be further off than we think because of a fear of change in the industry which has relied on Mixed Media Models for decades and the walled gardens of data that have increasingly siloed and segmented data applicability.

Here are some takeaways from the Attribution Accelerator conference:

Challenges to Attribution

There are many reasons why it has taken so long for attribution to start to gain traction in the industry according to John Leeman, former CEO of Fresh Direct. Companies fear choosing the right dataset, upending the current business model or changing the decision set of marketers which results in less creative control and second guessing of their media choices.  And, once having instituted an attribution model, what if it’s wrong? “It doesn't have to be perfectly accurate to be valuable,” he stated.

But moving towards a prove-able attribution model is pivotal in this new media world of ever increasing consumer touchpoints that make the journey to purchase a meandering minefield. “Get over your fear- trust your gut, imagine, realize and just do it,” he concluded.

Finding Solutions for Advertisers

Many companies are tackling multi touch attribution head-on, striving for a real time model that might even incorporate media mix modeling, drive minute by minute allocation decisions and increase advertising agility. But there are many, many considerations that may vary by brand and by company.

Charlie Hilton, AVP Advanced Analytics for AT&T, noted that her company has been, “doing attribution for nine years. We are now shifting gears to true attribution and near real time optimization.” Her attribution methodology needs to take into account how all of the different media tactics interact with each other, how to quantify the precise combination of different touch points along the way and if advertising for one product impacts other products.

Kristina Kaganer, Director of Global Market Strategy, Coty, has product lines that span from discount to high end.  “Fighting for shelf space at Walmart involves different competition than when you are competing at Sephora,” she noted. Scalable attribution is her company’s goal and that requires the collection and control of pertinent data, technology that functions on the local level (which can differ depending on locality), the standardization of processes that can cross local markets, data storage and analytics. 

Finding Solutions for Media Companies

There are five keys to driving sales, according to David Poltrack, CBS Corporation Chief Research Officer and President, CBS Vision and they are Reach, Targeting, Recency, Creative and Context. “Few TV campaigns are tapping the full potential of TV,” he asserted. From untested creative, a disregard to context, a cost efficiency rather than a reach orientation and little attention paid to recency, advertisers are not maximizing the true value of television in a buy. “Digital is not going to replace TV,” he stated. “Advertisers and marketers must focus on getting TV right. TV is a reach medium and a combination of TV and digital is important. Understanding how to get that combination right is what attribution is all about,” he added.

Summarizing the results of a study with CBS, Leslie Wood, Chief Research Officer, Nielsen Catalina Solutions noted that the fundamentals for advertising are as follows: Creative is the most Important factor, although media is playing an increasingly larger role. Reach is critical because only consumers who are reached can respond. Targeting has to focus on buyers of the product or service and Recency is vital because the value of exposure decays over time.

Finding Solutions for Measurement and Data Companies

Nielsen has always owned its own data. But in a world of first party data and big datasets, Nielsen is becoming more flexible and philosophical in how they acquire data and partner with other companies in the space. Matthew Krepsik, Global Head of Analytics for Nielsen, spoke of his company’s journey working across walled gardens. “We have the algorithm. We are good at the math. But it is not about building a better algorithm. The most important thing we can do now is to seek out better data.”

It is not a simple journey because, he noted, “every touch point can drive conversion. Shoppers are increasingly changing their behavior. They are becoming omni-channel digital natives and engaging brands directly.” Different products have very different purchasing cycles which make them multi-dimensional, multi-faceted and difficult for attribution. Nielsen is striving to tackle the de-duplication of devices so as to better analyze ROI, data hygiene and privacy compliance so as to insure an attribution model that better allocates marketing dollars

Attribution “is an elusive quest,” he concluded.  So too for us all.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com