When it comes to marketing attribution, digital marketers are living in the golden age. They have more options, models, and metrics than at any other time in the history of marketing. Prior to the rise of online marketing, marketers had to rely on harder-to-track metrics. How do you measure the impact of a billboard or even a radio or television ad?

Digital advertising is one of the most cost-effective channels to grow your business. The benefit of digital advertising is that you get lots of data back from the advertising network and can use that data to optimize and improve your marketing. Two of the most popular ways to measure attribution are View-through Attribution and Click-through Attribution.

Measuring this data is a requirement for successful digital marketing campaigns. Let's take a deeper dive into each of these metrics and then look at how server-side data tools like MetaRouter can help capture and distribute this data.

What is View-through Attribution?

View-through attribution (VTA) is a measure that assigns credit to ad impressions that result in a conversion, page view, or engagement at a later point in time. For example, if someone sees your advertisement on Facebook and doesn't click it, but decides later on to view your website through a Google search, this would be considered a view-through attribution conversion. 

The argument for VTA is that ad impressions should be properly credited with conversion actions even if there is a lag time between viewing the ad and completing the desired action. This makes sense–you've likely seen an ad before and not clicked on it, but later on recalled the brand and decided to investigate on your own. 

How does view-through attribution work? 

View-through attribution works by tracking the behavior of individuals on advertising networks (like Facebook Ads or Google Ads) and then matching that individual to user interactions on your website. As you can guess, this requires using cookies to effectively track behavior. Cookies on the advertising network track events and then match it to either cookies on your website or, as we'll see, are matched up against data packages you deliver to the ad network via server-side tracking. 

Benefits of view-through attribution

For digital marketers, view-through attribution is highly beneficial because it allows you to measure the impact of your advertising without requiring an immediate action. This is more in line with consumer behavior, and utilizes what is called a lookback window to attribute ad impressions with actions. 

The technology that enables view-through attribution is sophisticated and a big change from the days before the internet. Think about it: marketers used to run advertisements in print, on radio and television, and on billboards with little-to-no direct attribution. View-through attribution allows for more precise measurement of the return on advertising spend than ever before. 

Example of View-Through Conversion

An example of a view-through conversion is when an individual sees your display advertisement on a network like Facebook. He or she views the ad but doesn't take a direct action such as clicking on the call-to-action button. Instead, some time later, they decide to visit your website and complete an action.

You may decide to set a lookback window on view-through conversions. This means setting a measurement rule that if an individual views an ad and within 90 days converts on your website, you will credit that ad with the conversion. As such, view-through conversions can take longer to measure than click-through conversions.

What is Click-through Attribution?

Click-through attribution (CTA) is simply the tracking of direct clicks on an advertisement that eventually lead to a purchase. While this is the most straightforward option with clear results, it doesn’t present a holistic view of all advertising channels on the decision-making process.

How does click-through attribution work? 

Click-through attribution works by tracking the click-through rates on an advertisement campaign and then tracking what actions are completed within that session. Matching individuals to click events is much easier than with view-through attribution. In some cases, you can do this on an anonymous level by looking at UTM parameters or web channel data in your analytics tool. Most advertisers provide a pixel or tracking code you can install client-side to get more enriched analytics. Similarly to view-through attribution, you can also send data packages via server-side tracking methods to third-party advertisers to get this enhanced view.

Benefits of click-through attribution

Click-through attribution has one big advantage: you can immediately see the impact of your advertising campaign. You are measuring the ability of ads to create a direct response and, therefore, can get a near real-time view of our return on advertising spend. This is advantageous to make quick optimizations to campaigns. For example, if you see one variation of your ad is driving more actions, then you can increase ad spend on that version and pull other ads from the market.

Example of click-through attribution

An example of click-through attribution is when a customer sees an advertisement for new shoes on Facebook. He or she likes the shoes, and clicks on the ad and makes a purchase. The attribution journey is quite clear: the advertisement on Facebook clearly prompted your customer to make a purchase.

Differences Between View-Through and Click-Through Attribution

Let's take a closer look at the differences between view-through and click-through attribution.

How MetaRouter Handles VTA

To provide VTA analytics, MetaRouter sends cookie values to third parties by syncing with them individually. The MetaRouter Sync Injector collects and enriches events with the cookie ID information so that the vendor can manage VTA. 

‍

Sometimes, vendors can use information from another party’s cookie ID (for example, MiQ can sync with Xandr, LiveRamp, or RevJet). In this case, we can—with the clients’ permission—pass a different vendor’s cookie ID for attribution purposes.

How MetaRouter Handles CTA

Anytime MetaRouter tracks a Click ID and passes it to the vendor, CTA is supported. Click IDs are often passed as URL decorators (the portion at the end of a URL) and those can also be accepted by the MetaRouter system and sent to the right vendor—or vendors.  

For example, a URL decorator that came from an email newsletter and Twitter Click ID looks like this:

http://www.example.com/article?ref=email&twclid=123

In this case, ref=email tells analytics software (customizable to your organization) that this link was clicked as part of a newsletter campaign and twclid=123 tells our system that this event has a Twitter Click ID of 123.  

While it is each organization’s responsibility to ensure that Click ID tracking is enabled and that data is passed appropriately throughout your properties, we’re happy to help. With that in place, MetaRouter has the ability to grab and enrich any Click ID in the data stream.

The server-side difference

Most digital marketers are likely more familiar with client-side tracking technologies to handle view-through and click-through attribution. This usually means installing tracking code from third-party advertisers on your website. The challenge with this approach is threefold:

• The tracking scripts may not adhere to privacy and legal requirements such as GDPR or CCPA
• The tracking scripts can increase page load time and impact the quality of user experience on your website
• You don't have control over the data shared with the advertising partner

Server-side tracking like MetaRouter provides a solution to each of these challenges. First, because the data delivery is entirely in your hands, you can ensure that data collected meets increasingly stringent privacy and data standards. Second, since you are not loaded the third-party scripts on your website, your website is more performant and provides a better user experience. Lastly, you can control when you send conversion data to the advertising partner and manage precisely what information you share.

With the looming threat of the end of third-party cookies, digital marketers are turning to server-side solutions to future proof their advertising measurement strategy. Grab a demo with MetaRouter today and experience the server-side difference.

‍