I had the opportunity to attend the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising Conference & Expo 2007 this year in New York. It was an excellent conference with great presentations and panel discussions on Video Trends, Media Fragmentation, Monetizing Content, Analytics / Reporting, Search Marketing / Optimization.

Is it right to give attribution to the last click? Does this give too much credit to search? What if you could measure all of the consumer touch points and create algorithms that properly weight credit for each? Methodologies are being developed and tested that will change the way we attribute credit for Web and search campaigns, creating a model for multiple digital platforms in the future. Some call it Multiple Attribution Protocol. In my opinion, this was the most interesting topic. This protocol examines the life of the relationship with the consumer, providing a weighted attribution, and credits the most significant points of contact with the sale or conversion. Each point of contact impacts the others, and nothing can be defined in a vacuum. The most-recent-exposure reporting approach is where only the final point of contact is credited for the sale or conversion.

Brand Awareness, Offline Purchases and Pass Along (Telling a Friend) are not accounted for in the Multiple Attribution Protocol at this point. Hopefully some day, new technologies will enable us to include these missing areas in some capacity.