H For example, a person came from advertising, then left, leaving the tab, closed the browser, opened the next day, climbed, but did not buy anything. Then I looked again in the search engine for what I wanted, came across your site and went in and performed the targeted action.
V second option: the visitor came from a social network, then left, returned from the search and bought.
T The third option: Came from a search, then left and came through an advertisement and bought.
Where are attribution models
V in each case, the source of conversion will be a different channel. At the same time, the first source is different for everyone, and in order to track it, there is a tool called attribution. There are models in almost every report and segment.
A tribulation is an opportunity to assess the contribution of one or another source of targeted action among all others. If you use an integrated approach to attracting traffic, then this is an opportunity to soberly assess their effectiveness and reallocate the budget if required. There is also such a thing as an attribution model. There are several of them, depending on the distribution of the weight of the conversion value.
- On the first click
- Last click
- Last significant click
TO Of course, there may be more of them, but I'm now talking specifically about what is in Yandex Metric.
What attribution models mean
V In the first case, 100% of the conversion value is given to the channel through which the client first touched your site. In the second, on the real last click that led to the conversion, for example, a person came from a search, left a bookmark and the next day bought from a bookmark. In the third case, all internal and transitions from bookmarks are discarded and only significant ones are shown (search, context, social networks, etc.).
How to distribute conversion power
WITH it reads that giving all the weight of the conversion to one single click is a road to nowhere and this approach does not reflect the real picture, so it is important to somehow distribute the weight. For example, 40% is given to the first and last significant click, and the remaining 20% to what happened within this process. After all, if a person came from a search, and bought through advertising, then by reducing the cost of SEO, considering that advertising works better, you risk being left without conversions at all, since the first touch was still from the search.
D Give an example. There is a certain number of conversions. We look at their different number, depending on the model we choose. First
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Conversion attribution is a multi-component concept made up of the terms “attribution” and “conversion”.
Conversion in business is the user taking a targeted action for the company. For example, if your goal is for a user to make a purchase, then the most important conversion for you will be the transaction.
Conversion is divided into macro and micro:
- Macro conversion is the ultimate action we are aiming for. For example, the same purchase of goods.
- Micro-conversion is the user's steps that lead him to a macro conversion: registering on the site, adding products, etc.
Attribution is a rule of distributed conversion value. Simply put - assigning "points" for a conversion in order to calculate its effectiveness.
Ultimately, conversion attribution is a method for determining the effectiveness of a marketing channel, calculating the contribution of a specific entity (channel, keyword, landing page) into the conversion.
Conversion attribution models
What is an attribution model Google analytics or Yandex Metrics is a set of rules by which you decide to determine the conversion value. There are 7 standard attribution models in Google Analytics and 2 in Yandex.Metrica.
Let's imagine that a visitor came to your site throughgoogle ad, then, after a while, follows the link from the social network, on the same day arriving at the site through the mailing list and by direct link.
- Model "Last interaction" ("Last touch"): All "points" are given to the last channel in this conversion chain. In our case, this will be a direct link.
- Last Indirect Click Model: In many ways it is similar to the previous model, but with the condition that direct visits are ignored, and all value is assigned to the last channel through which the user came before the macro conversion. In this example, it will be a mailing list.
- Model " Last click on AdWords ": All conversion value is invested in the last click on your AdWords ad. With us, this is the only click.
- First interaction model: The first channel in the chain through which the user made a transition is considered valuable. Here it will be AdWords again.
- Linear model: All channels in the conversion chain are assigned the same value. There are 4 elements in our chain, and each is assigned 25% of the total number of "points".
- Model "Taking into account the age of interaction": The closer the user's point of interaction is to the time of the macro conversion, the more valuable it will be. The term "exponential decay" is used here, and the default half-life is 7 days. That is, if the action took place more than 7 days ago, then it is 2 times less valuable, and more than 2 weeks - 4 times. Let's say the AdWords clicked through 8 days ago from the purchase date. Then this channel will receive 2 times less value than all the others. The most value will be from mail and direct links.
- Positional Attribution Model: This is the fusion of the first and last touch models. The first and the last link in the chain receive 40% of the total conversion value, the remaining 20% is evenly distributed among all participants. In our case, 40% will receive AdWords and direct visits, 10% each - social network and mail.
Yandex metric attribution models include the first and last transition, the last significant transition.
- In the case of the first option, all the conversion value goes to the channel on which the first touch occurred.
- In the second - to the last click that led to the conversion.
- If everything is clear with the first two, then the last one needs to be dealt with more carefully. The last significant transition is similar to attribution for the last transition, with the only difference that transitions from bookmarks are discarded and only significant sources remain: search, context, social networks.
You can customize your conversion model based on the terms of your ad campaign.
How to choose an attribution model?
The conversion attribution calculation model is selected depending on the specifics of your business and advertising campaign:
- If your business is based on purchases and transactions that do not involve a decision-making phase, the Last Interaction model will work for you.
- “Last Indirect Click” is good as a baseline for comparison with other models and if you do not want to count direct visits to the site.
- The “last click on AdWords” is used to determine the highest performing AdWords ad.
- If you want to know what piques interest in your visitors and drives first touch, then use the First Interaction model.
- If you are in constant contact with a potential customer through advertising all the way from first click to conversion, then use the Linear attribution model.
- For short-term advertising campaigns, it is recommended to use the Age of Interaction Accounting model.
- If you value the customer's first exposure to the product and the final conversion equally, then you should use Position-Based Attribution.
- Use the "Last Click" model for technical site analysis and page detection without counter code.
- Set up the "First click" model if the user takes a long time to decide on the target action and return to the site from any other traffic sources.
- "Last significant transition" for sites with fast conversions occurring within a single visit.
Conversion attribution is a powerful tool used in internet marketing to analyze and adjust an ad campaign. Using it, you can always find effective advertising channels and reduce your business development costs.
The days when you could only work with one traffic source (like SEO) and still have good sales are long gone. Today, only an integrated approach gives a really effective growth in sales. However, working with several sources, we are faced with an important question - what role does each of the channels play in the chain of user interaction with the site (multichannel sequence) and how to understand the importance of each channel? Indeed, it depends on understanding:
- how much investment to invest in each source of visitors,
- what is the return from each channel,
- how channels interact with each other.
Pay special attention to interaction. For example, users from social networks may not make a purchase immediately after the transition, but at the same time it is social networks inform visitors about your company, and after the next interactions, for example, through contextual advertising, visitors make a purchase.
The rules by which the value of a perfect conversion is distributed among channels is called attribution. Knowing which channels the visitor used, we can assign more or less value to each of the channels (or one of them) and, based on this assessment, make a decision about the effectiveness of the channel.
There can be many attribution models, the most common are:
You can select an attribution model in the report Attribution -> Comparison Tool
:
We have written in more detail about the tool in the article below, first we will consider what are the main attribution models.
1. Attribution on the last click
In this case, all of the conversion credit is assigned to the last source of user contact with the site. It is clear that this is not entirely correct, since on almost all sites, even those offering very cheap goods, the user usually makes 2-3 transitions before the conversion occurs.
For a site with an expensive or complex product, there can be much more such transitions, since the user ponders, compares, and gets acquainted with the information about the product.
2. Attribution by the last indirect click
This attribution model is the default in Google Analytics. All conversion credit is assigned to the last channel if it is not a direct visit (for example, from bookmarks or a URL entered into the browser bar). In the case of a direct site visit, the conversion credit is assigned to the previous channel. The logic is quite simple - if a user came to you from bookmarks, it means that at first he should have learned about your site from somewhere.
3. Attribution on the first click
What is link building in SEO? As the name implies, the opposite is true - the entire conversion value is assigned to the first channel that allowed the visitor to know about your offer.
4. First and last click
The value is divided equally between the first and the last channel that the user followed in the conversion chain.
5. Linear attribution model
The conversion value is divided equally among all the sources that the user followed.
6. Model of attribution taking into account the age of interaction
The closer the channel is to the moment of conversion, the greater its value. The importance of each interaction decreases with the increase in the time until the conversion itself.
Google Analytics reports that measure the contribution of each traffic source
Understanding the importance of correctly assessing each traffic source and knowing the main types of attribution, we can turn to special Google Analytics reports:
Already looking at general information in the tab "Overview"
, we can make for ourselves a general understanding of how traffic sources interact with each other. Each source is marked with a colored circle, we can clearly see what percentage of traffic "intersects" - this means that the visitor used several sources before making a purchase. 
Pay attention - in the left upper corner the screenshot contains data on associated conversions.
Associated conversions are a visit from some source that was at the beginning or in the middle of the chain of visits, but not at the end, i.e. the number of interactions that did not lead to a conversion, but participated in the chain.
As you can see in the screenshot, out of 744 conversions, 423 (more than half) had preparatory visits. The sources that gave these visits did not lead to direct sales, but with a high degree of probability we can assume that without these associated conversions, there would not have been, in fact, the conversion itself that brought in the income.
Important! The omnidirectional funnel report uses a last click attribution model, unlike all other reports that use the default indirect last click.
To evaluate in more detail the associated conversions for each source, there is a special report, which is called so - "Associated Conversions" :
For example, in the screenshot, we clearly see that the clicks on the links gave us 48 conversions over the specified period, in addition, another 58 times given source was a milestone for users who eventually made the conversion.
With your e-commerce setup set up, this report will help you estimate the revenue from each traffic source much more accurately. As you can imagine, this is very important when we decide which of the sources is worth investing in. You can, of course, be guided by the number of conversions without e-commerce, but, of course, this is a less accurate indicator when forming an advertising budget.
To assess in more detail how traffic sources interact, you should go to the report "Key funnels for conversion" :
Here you can see all the possible combinations of sources that led to a conversion.
For instance:
Additional reports to help you better understand the traffic chain before the conversion - "Time to conversion" and "Sequence length". In them, you will see statistics on the number of days from the moment of visit to the conversion and the number of visits to any source until the conversion is completed.
Also Google Analytics enables us to compare different models attribution Conversion→Attribution -> Model Comparison Tool
:
This tool allows you to better understand the difference between different attribution options and visually see the value of each channel at different stages.
For example, let's compare the last-click, first-click, and linear attribution model: 
Note: free search, if we measure the conversion only by the last interaction, loses direct channel traffic. The site owner, upon seeing such a report, will immediately shout: SEO specialist is not working well!
But, comparing with other attribution models, we will see that the search traffic is the most powerful for the first interaction, i.e. it is from this channel that real buyers learn about your site. The importance of search traffic is also confirmed by the linear attribution model, where its share is also the highest.
Keep in mind that comparing attributions allows you to look at the success of each channel from different perspectives, but to compare channels with each other and measure the success of each of them, you must choose a single attribution model.
For instance:
- for a short-term campaign aimed at a momentary purchase - by the last click;
- for an SMM campaign that increases overall awareness - on the first click, etc.
In Google Analytics, you can also create your own unique attribution model, but it takes a lot of time to create it and pre-evaluate the standard models.
If you're serious about budgeting and assessing the contribution of each source to the success of your business, you can't do without multi-channel funnels and attribution assessments. You need to understand the importance of the channel, not just its contribution to direct selling.
Pay attention to these Google Analytics reports, work with them and various attribution options - it will help you use all traffic channels more efficiently and competently. Based on these reports, you can intelligently plan your ad budget across different channels.
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