Seph Zdarko, Quantcast
Last-touch attribution is overly simplistic. He compared last-touch attribution to giving a trophy in a relay race only to the last runner on the team who carries the baton to the finish line.
A consumer’s first visit to the advertiser’s site after a campaign begins is a crucial inflection point that is not properly accounted for in many multi-touch attribution models. That first visit represents a critical transition from upper-funnel to lower-funnel on a customer journey. Moreover, it also represents a good point to delineate between the use of first-party and third-party data, because it is the point at which a cookie can be dropped on the visitor.
Quantcast’s “split-funnel” attribution framework divides the touchpoints in the online consumer journey between pre-site-visit and post-site-visit touchpoints.).
He introduced a few metrics in his presentation including: First-visit conversion rate: The percentage who convert on the first visit to an advertiser’s site vs. subsequent visits provides a sense of the importance of prospecting touchpoints vs. re-targeting touchpoints.