What is the advantage of the C3 Metrics modeling approach?

95% of all online advertisers (Gartner, 2013) are still using last click.  Most are still unaware that last click data, siloed in Affiliate, Search, and multiple display logins (along with email, Organic, SEO, etc.) over counts the number of transactions and wildly misleads marketers as to where to spend.

For a marketer (or the marketer's boss) who recently realized that every metric is wrong if not fully attributed and attributed with sound data--is overwhelmed.  Just understanding how to rethink measurement and undo years of habit is a challenge.

Jumping into a Mercedes-Benz S550 might present:

Change management is critical, and if a client is ready to drive a full-blown S550, wait the time, pay the money, and either bring their own model in "R" or commission the same, then that is available.

But, people often begin running 5K races before they run marathons and IronMan's--and like Mercedes-Benz we want them to get started with something manageable, and then after enough time has passed, step them up to a more advanced model.

Abandoning last click, finally using single-source data, having a platform capable of firing tags for programmatic in the language that programmatic scales, doing it with purified, conversion controlled data, and lastly having the ability for a marketer to confidently explain this to a company executive team simply--is the key to change management as well as improved ROI.

If the marketer can't explain the problem, the solution, and how it's done simply--moving from last click to attribution fails.  Once adopted, accepted, utilized to increase leads and revenue with constant cost:  the appetite for a faster model follows.

So philosophically, choice is important for C3 Metrics.  

We will always have our CLA model, as well as the S550 which is a custom black box where you can bring your own model in "R' or have that created.  

We feel this approach of choice is the best in the Industry because if you don't get adoption, the industry won't change.  Furthermore, we have witnessed stories of companies that jumped into very fast and expensive models from our competitors--only to have waited for months without data to act on, a big check to write, consequently leaving the entire process of switching to attribution broken.

Single-Source data collection with accurate data is key to any algorithmic approach and is one of the major advantages of C3.  C3 Metrics collects data via its own real-time tags and does not do data sampling nor panels.  From this real-time data collection, C3 is able to synchronize order count, revenue, clicks and impressions across a number of different sources.  In addition, removal of False-Positives is required for an accurate model.  False-positive touch points, those determined to not have effect on the user converting (non-viewable ads and 'last second ads', navigational brand-term search) are excluded from the model to remove data multicollinearity.

Before you can prove accuracy with a model, you need to prove the quality of the data you’re modeling is accurate.