In this era of complex retail channels, one of the big challenges is attributing the contribution of the various channel members in the consumer’s purchase process.

As Forbes’ MarketShare notes:

“In today’s more measurement-focused marketing world, cross-channel attribution is a hot topic. Briefly, this is the science of using advanced analytics to allocate proportional credit to each marketing touch point across all online and off-line channels, leading to a desired customer action.”

“That’s basically how Forrester defined it in The Forrester Wave: Cross-Channel Attribution Providers, Q4 2014 report (here), published in November. At MarketShare, we like to phrase it a bit more simply as ‘giving credit where credit is due.’ Either way, the result is this: Attribution helps brands track their marketing and media efforts more accurately and show how they impact the overall business.”

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