Attribution Modeling - More Than Just Numbers!

1. What is Attribution Modelling?
2. Benefits of Attribution Modelling
3. Disciplines that Attribution Modelling unites
4. Models of Attribution Modelling
5. How attribution modelling works
6. Significance for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
7. Why is attribution becoming increasingly difficult?
8. Use cases of Attribution Modelling
9. Practical example - Conversion Paths Report GA4
10. Final thoughts
11. Conclusion

Attribution Modelling sounds like a buzzword, but there's so much more to it. It's the art of accurately measuring and understanding the success of your marketing campaigns. We want to take you on a journey through this fascinating topic!

What is Attribution Modelling?

In short: It's the assignment of credits to different marketing touchpoints. Why is this important? Because it shows you which parts of your strategy truly work!

Longer formulated: Attribution Modelling deals with the allocation of values to different touchpoints within the Customer Journey. The goal is to determine the significance and influence of each individual point of contact on the Return on Investment (ROI) or the calculation of the conversion rate. Customers interact on their path through various media such as ads, hyperlinks or articles. Attribution Modelling helps to quantify the influence of these touchpoints on the ROI.

Benefits of Attribution Modelling

With Attribution Modelling you can optimize your marketing measures in a targeted manner. This way, you better understand how customers react to your campaigns and where the budget should best be invested.

Disciplines that Attribution Modelling unites

Attribution Modelling is a true team player. It brings together data analysis, marketing, psychology and more – a real all-rounder! The origins of Attribution Modelling lie in attribution theory, which was formulated by Fritz Heider in the 1990s. This theory serves as the basis for modern marketing, which is about assessing the impact of advertising measures and interactions on purchase decisions. Earlier models such as Cost Per Click (CPC) or Last-Click Attribution often did not capture the entire Customer Journey and led to inaccurate allocations.

Models of Attribution Modelling

From simple First-Click models to complex algorithms – the world of Attribution Modelling is diverse. There are various models to assess the contributions of individual touchpoints. These include, among others:

• Last Interaction
• Last Indirect Click
• Last AdWords Click
• First Interaction
• Linear Attribution
• Timeline
• Position Based

Each of these models has its own advantages and disadvantages and is suitable for different types of campaigns and marketing goals.

How attribution modelling works

At the center of Attribution Modelling is an inventory of all channels and touchpoints between medium and user. Since conversion paths can be very different and complex, it is crucial to understand and track digital assets and their interrelationships precisely.

Significance for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For SEO experts, Attribution Modelling is particularly valuable as it helps to evaluate and optimize the effectiveness of different channels and campaigns. By analyzing the customer journey, marketers can determine which channels generate the most traffic or the highest sales.

Why is attribution becoming increasingly difficult?

Attribution Modelling is not a new idea, but the increasing use of multiple devices and browsers makes it more complicated. Despite these challenges, it is essential to understand attribution in order to effectively analyze user behavior and conversion paths.

Use cases of Attribution Modelling

Here's where it gets practical: We present specific use cases so you understand how Attribution Modelling can revolutionize your marketing. We want to dive deep into the world of GA4 Conversion Paths.

This is about how different channels contribute to conversions and how they interact. Let's explore this exciting area in Google Analytics 4 together.

Example: A user sees an AdWords ad, signs up for a newsletter, and later makes a purchase. Attribution Modelling helps to determine the contribution of each of these touchpoints to the purchase.

Practical example - Conversion Paths Report GA4

The Conversion Paths Report in GA4 shows how conversions are attributed to different traffic sources. You can use various components to influence the outcome of the report. This way, you can see how the conversion credit is distributed among different sources.

Screenshot Conversions Paths Report GA4

In the world of marketing technology, there often exists an island mentality among the various tools, leading to a fragmented view of conversions. A single marketing tool often does not know what other touchpoints customers had on their journey.

Each completed "Purchase" event leads to a determination of the conversion value, which is based on an attribution model that looks at the entire customer journey across all channels. This calculated value can then come into play within the respective tools for operational optimizations.

So, in this example, an originally assigned conversion value of $20.40 is available to the different channels in an appropriate weighting. So $12.24 for Referral and $8.16 for Organic Search.

Screenshot: Conversions GA4

Touch Points Definition

GA4 distinguishes between different touchpoints in the Conversion Paths reports: early touchpoints, middle touchpoints and late touchpoints. This distinction helps to better understand the importance of different interactions in the course of the customer journey.

Early Touch Points: The first 25% of touchpoints on the path, rounded to the nearest whole number. This segment is empty if the path only has one touchpoint.

Middle Touch Points: The middle 50% of touchpoints on the path. If the path has <3 touchpoints, this segment is empty.

Late Touch Points: The last 25% of touchpoints on the path, rounded up to the nearest whole number. If the path only consists of one touchpoint, this segment contains the touchpoint.

Screenshot: Touch Points GA4

You can hover your mouse over the individual channels to obtain further details about the conversion credits. With regard to credits, organic search has a stronger influence at the beginning and in the middle of the conversion journey. It seems to initiate the conversion. Of course, you would need to go deeper to find out if there are differences between the branded and non-brand search, as this could also have an impact.

Tools like Sistrix, Ahrefs, or others from the SEO-Suite category can help, among other things, to find the best performers among the organic keywords.

If we select another attribution model (last-click), as the name suggests, the beginning and middle part of the journey remain empty. The early and middle touchpoints show a very low amount of data/channels (negligible) if you choose the preferred last click of ads as the attribution model.

GA4 Conversion Path Insights

In the screenshot above we see that Organic Search plays a significant role at the start of our customer journey, only to finally convert the customers as "Direct" Traffic. The drawback of this visualization is that we don't get the exact values of all channels in Google Analytics, but only the top five in each diagram.

If we want to go a level deeper, we can also filter our data. Let's say we want to see if we achieve different results on "Desktop" than on "Mobile".

Screenshot: Conversion Paths GA4

A bit more straightforward is the "Insights Function", with which we can answer a FAQ of our data with just a few clicks.

Screenshot: Insights GA4

Final thoughts

The Conversion Paths Report in GA4 is a valuable addition to the standard reports in GA4. It allows a deeper understanding of the customer journey, even though attribution is becoming increasingly difficult. Use this report to adapt your marketing strategies and optimize conversions or to understand at a high level where your customers are actually coming from.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. You can gain many more insights if you use tools like Semrush, Ryte or others from the SEO-Suite category for the detailed performance of your (organic) keywords.

Conclusion

Attribution Modelling is no witchcraft, but a tool in your marketing arsenal. With the right methods and tools, you can take your campaigns to the next level! It is becoming increasingly important in order to understand the complexity of today's customer journeys and to use marketing budgets more effectively. It also allows a more accurate evaluation of marketing activities and helps you make informed decisions.