Google Attribution was one of the biggest announcements to come out of Google Marketing Next. It is a free solution that pulls data from Google Analytics, AdWords or Double Click Search and provides a more holistic view of conversions across all these platforms. Let’s look at what this announcement means for online marketers:
What is Google Attribution?
Attribution 360 is the enterprise-level offering Google got when it bought Adometry back in 2014. You can look at Google Attribution as a simplified version of the Adometry product. Users can link their Analytics account with an Attribution account. At that point, an attribution model can be assigned to conversion events. Eventually, you can feed that data back to AdWords to inform future bidding.
What problem does Attribution aim to solve?
One of the biggest problems for both Google and advertisers is that they only see the final click interaction. For example, if a user clicks on a generic term ad in search results or on a website, but only takes action after clicking on a branded ad, then only the branded interaction shows. With Attribution, Google aims to show how mid-funnel and upper-level interactions so that advertisers do not end campaigns prematurely.
Also, by showing advertisers how upper and mid-funnel interactions affect sales and clicks, Google hopes that they will take that into consideration when bidding. Advertisers will benefit from seeing multi-platform multi-path conversion paths, but Google stands to gain more with increased bidding for generic keywords.
