The balance between lift and attribution

I’ve shared a few times on here how precise attribution of online activities is becoming more and more difficult to track. It feels like companies are collecting every bit of information that they can about us, which is true, but it’s becoming trickier to put all of the pieces together.

Ad blockers and cookie policies are a big reason why, but there’s also just the fact that so many marketing activities simply aren’t done in ways that are trackable (private conversations online, in-person events, etc).

A recent article from Ann Gynn on the Content Marketing Institute blog suggests that we go back to tracking marketing like we did in 1985 — focus on the lift of the brand. From her article:

“ To measure impact, you should follow in the footsteps of the 1980s marketer. Evaluate the before-and-after metrics overall, and don’t assign a value to each component’s contributions. “

That’s not to say that we should ignore SEO and other current marketing best practices, as those are still certainly valuable, but that we shouldn’t put as much weight into the numbers. Again, from Ann:

“ Still, your brand can’t ignore search rankings as they play a role in those zero-click results and some humans still see Google, other search engines, and even generative AI tools as their go-to…