Metrics of Online Advertising

Too often, in the Digital purchase funnel, the last click gets the credit for the conversion

The reality is that media channels overlap and multiple sites reach consumers prior to conversion. Yet, the advertising metrics and models developed for online marketers largely ignore the question of when media exposure occurs.

By measuring the last ad seen or clicked by a converter, they focus entirely on a brief time span at the bottom of the funnel. Evaluating only a single point of advertising contact oversimplifies the delivery and performance of any media channel."

In studying more than 17 million conversions between May and September of 2008, Microsoft was able to probe conversions that represented the results of advertising campaigns conducted by 250 advertisers on thousands of web sites - specifically, a total of more than over seventeen million conversions that occurred between May and September of 2008.

"Notably, affiliate networks and search engines often reach customers for the first time just a few days or hours prior to conversion. But categories like entertainment and news tend to reach in-market consumers weeks or months before conversion, and deliver their frequency over a longer period of time," the Atlas Institute offering explains.

"The reason why these sites reach consumers at such different times becomes clearer when we consider where they might logically reach a consumer who is traveling through the sales funnel."

Source : World Advertising and Research Center , Microsoft