Analytic Partners is proud to have been recently recognized by Sequent Partners as a star of attribution in the category of “Leading When There’s Less Data”. These awards honor the people and organizations leading the way in what the future of attribution and data/insights quality may be.

The recognition was borne out of a series of experiments we performed last year to better assess the impact of data loss based on business outcomes from measurement. In our rapidly changing world, it has never been more important for brands and marketers to prepare for the kinds of data loss that may occur due to regulations, platform policies and now, the elimination of Google Chrome cookies.

The experiments involved working with two different scenarios:

• Scenario 1: In the first scenario, we removed all identifiers from 35% of individuals/households to simulate a data loss. To expand on that, we leveraged three methodologies to evaluate the impact on the results (last click, MTA model only, and Analytic Partners’ Unified Model) and randomly removed an additional 20%, 30% 40%, 50% and 60% of user data in order to evaluate if there was a fundamental point at which models lose the majority of accuracy and stability.
• Scenario 2: In the second scenario, we removed 10% from all digital data files, plus 25% from each group of two or more demographic pairs. We ran two different versions of demographic data loss (2a and 2b), once again leveraging three methodologies listed above. In addition, we tested the effects of data loss on digital display rank order when using those methodologies.

In performing these experiments – the parameters of which were provided by the ARF Cross-Platform Measurement Council Attribution Working Group – we leveraged a Unified Modeling approach to measurement which included integrating Commercial Mix Models (CMM) with Multi-touch Attribution (MTA) modeling in an iterative process. The process synchronized the model insights from each technique through proprietary algorithms that we applied for speedy convergence.

To combat traditional MTA challenges such as walled gardens, blind spots, seasonality, and data quality issues, Analytic Partners utilized an innovative attribution modeling approach that estimated the impact of marketing activities on conversions, while simultaneously adding clarity.

Across scenarios, a Unified Model outperformed MTA-only and Last Click methodologies. This means that oftentimes methodology, more than data loss, affects outcomes. With that in mind, we recommend that brands consider the following when handling similar challenges in data loss:

• - Ensure experiments/testing, validation, and a Unified methodology is incorporated within your measurement strategy
• - Continuously assess the quality of the data/sample and adjust measurement granularity to ensure robust results
• - Major shifts in spend should be monitored for the expected business impact

You can dive deeper into the experiments and full results here.