In this episode of Matchmade Talks, we were joined by Maor Sadra, the co-founder and CEO of Incrmntl, to discuss the challenges of measuring and attributing influencer marketing and other video-based mediums.
Maor, a mobile industry veteran with years of experience in tackling measurement and attribution challenges, had great insights on how advertisers can better measure the effectiveness of influencer and creator marketing, and why simple, click-based solutions and last-touch attribution do not provide a realistic picture of how well creators tend to perform.
Watch the full episode below. For more episodes and creator marketing content, keep an eye on Matchmade’s YouTube channel.
Content summary
Dream and reality of attribution
The dream of measurement and attribution has been accurate, user-level multi-touch attribution which would let marketers correctly evaluate how each and every interaction with marketing content affects a person’s choice to purchase a product. However, due to user privacy restrictions and difficulty of accurately measuring these interactions, this dream has never come to pass.
In the end, most advertisers simply resorted to using more simplistic attribution and measurement solutions. Out of the different methods, last-touch (or last-click) attribution has remained the most popular one. But last-touch attribution has many shortcomings.
One of the main pitfalls of last-touch attribution is that it does not take into account the entire customer journey and how people interact with different kinds of advertising mediums.
Interaction with the advertising medium affects the results
With traditional online ads, a user’s default behavior is to click through to a landing page. But with video-based mediums such as creator content, the default interaction is different.
For example, when watching YouTube videos, the default behavior of many users is to watch the piece of content you came for, not to interrupt the experience by clicking out to another location. It doesn’t mean advertising on these platforms is not effective, but ignoring this difference in interaction, and failing to attribute it, will make the performance of these mediums look far worse than it actually is.
So, accurately estimating the effectiveness of influencers is an area where traditional attribution methods tend to fall short. But what can be done to account for this?
Maor advocated for example surveying one’s customers to understand the role creators play on your customers better. This can reveal that they are surprisingly effective. More advanced measurement solutions like Incrmntl can also provide a more realistic picture of the performance of these kinds of mediums.
Other tools that can help include for example conversion lift studies and organic uplift measurement, but advertisers need to acknowledge that these methods have their own limitations as well. Other methods such as embedding QR codes or using promotional codes can also help build a clearer picture.
One of the key takeaways from our conversation with Maor is that it’s important to go beyond the simple, click-based metrics in order to truly understand the effectiveness of influencer marketing.
In conclusion
Measuring and attributing influencer marketing and other video-based mediums can be challenging. By understanding the pitfalls of traditional attribution methods, considering the full customer journey, and using more sophisticated methods, marketers can get a realistic picture of how well influencers are performing.
For more insights, watch the full episode above.
About Matchmade Talks
Matchmade Talks is a video series where we interview people from the gaming industry and beyond. You’ll hear from influencer marketers, content creators, thought leaders, executives and many more interesting people. You’ll learn how they see the future of the gaming industry and the creator economy, how to successfully leverage the power of content creators, the fastest growing marketing medium in the world, what are the key trends in user acquisition and much more.
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