Finishing up and closing down after some successful days at ad:tech San Francisco – and with this event being one of the biggest shows in the interactive world and the SF event is doubtless one of the premier locations for the ad:tech guys – it did not disappoint. However; the sessions seemed a bit “thin” on content and quality – perhaps because I compare it to Emetrics speakers, who are usually very deep and highly qualified. BUT there was one session which I think had a very valuable question:

“How to attribute conversions to campaigns?”

Most Analytics Vendors and Analysts works with a concept of either:

Where you will see that most SEM (Search Engine Marketing) companies use an “Intelligent” attribution model, whereas if the visit comes from a paid campaign, the direct source is used and if the visit is organic they will trace it back to the original paid campaign source if any. This is of course all cool if you are in the SEM business – BUT in all fairness, this is not correct and attributes far too much value to your PPC campaign efforts. There have been a lot of research done, reliable as well, which clearly indicates that the key points of influence is not necessarily the searched for keyword only – but a mixture of touch points before the final clickthrough from Banners to Blogs to …

But how to attribute then?

I think that is a post by itself :-) – so let me hit submit and get started on my journey back to Europe. Yes! It is a Journey getting from SF to Budapest. Cheers.