What is attribution?
In general terms, “attribution” translates to “responsibility.” In the context of paid media, attribution is the understanding of which digital channel/effort/campaign is responsible for which type of website performance metrics. For most companies, measuring attribution is done through Google Analytics under the Default Channel Grouping section.
Why is it important?
Mixed Attribution
Modern consumers are constantly bombarded with new information daily, and visitors to your website may interact with a variety of your own channels (social media, campaigns, etc.) as they get engaged with your brand. This process creates a “mixed attribution” conundrum wherein brands try to isolate which channels affected website interactions the most and when. As such, it’s important that all of your digital channels (particularly paid media) have ways of reporting traffic back to your analytics platform so you can understand this mixed model as well as possible.
Attribution Models
Most modern digital platforms use a “last-click” model of attribution wherein the channel that last provided traffic to your website receives the attribution for performance (e.g., pageviews, sales, etc.) from that point forward
For most beginners, this model is crucial in understanding which touchpoint in the customer journey (out of potentially hundreds) was the last to tip the scale and send the users to your site. For more advanced modeling, we recommend reviewing Google’s guide to attribution in Analytics.
Optimization by Channel
One of the greatest values of attribution is the comparative data it provides across your digital channels. With this data in hand, you can isolate which digital efforts have produced the best results over time and which have not. You can then expand what’s working in the high-performing channels and adjust (or remove) what’s not in the low-performing ones. For more information on channel groupings in Google Analytics, we recommend reviewing Google’s support guide.
How do I start?
Analytics Integration
Most digital platforms today have some sort of basic integration with Google Analytics or some way of automatically categorizing traffic from these platforms on Google Analytics.
For example, Google products such as Google Ads automatically connect and categorize visitor information once the two are connected in the Analytics Admin panel.
In addition, Google’s Default Channel Definitions allow for certain organic platforms (such as Facebook) to be categorized. For more information on these groupings, we recommend reviewing Google’s support page.
UTM Codes
For all digital platforms and paid media tools that do not already connect to Google Analytics, we recommend utilizing UTM codes to correctly attribute traffic from these platforms to Analytics.
UTM codes are small pieces of information added to a landing page URL (in your campaign) that tell Google Analytics how to categorize that campaign/platform traffic. Google has more information on these UTM codes and how to build them on their support page.
