I don't know enough about the advertising industry to say that this comment is wrong, but it triggers some warning bells for me that make me suspect it might be wrong.
In the podcasting industry, referral codes are used specifically so that advertisers can figure out how many conversions are coming from the podcast -- it's not enough to tell them, "X people heard the thing." They want to know whether or not it's worth advertising based on concrete user acquisition numbers.
AT&T recently put out an interview about their advertising strategy as a content company. The quote from that piece[0]:
> "Regardless of how you see a directed car ad, say, AT&T can then use geolocation data from your phone to see if you went to a dealership and possibly use data from the automaker to see if you signed up for a test-drive—and then tell the automaker, “Here’s the specific ROI on that advertising,” says Lesser. AT&T claims marketers are paying four times the usual rate for that kind of advertising."
And on a more fundamental level, it doesn't make sense to me why targeted ads would even be such a profitable industry in the first place if advertisers didn't care about increasing ROI per ad -- and that means improving click-through rates and conversion rates. I don't see how I wouldn't want attribution stats per-campaign if I was trying to improve my ad targeting, or doing AB tests on different marketing styles.
It is entirely possible that I don't understand the advertising industry very well, but from everything I've seen, advertisers do seem to care about attribution, a lot. Maybe click-through isn't the best way to measure that, but I don't see strong evidence that brand recognition or exposure is a more valuable target for advertisers to be pursuing than direct revenue impact.
In the podcasting industry, referral codes are used specifically so that advertisers can figure out how many conversions are coming from the podcast
The old-school method of this was to have unique response numbers. It's why you see phone numbers like "800-555-1212 extension 37." When you call the number and ask for extension 37, the person on the horn says, "Yes, this is extension 37..." and begins their pitch while noting that affiliate 37 gets the conversion credit.
It's similar to TV commercials you see that tell you to "Go to example.com/TV37."
Some lead generators are willing to splash out extra money on specific phone numbers without extensions because they believe they convert better. It's why toll free phone numbers expanded so rapidly from just 800 and 888 to 877, 866, 855, and 844.
They do care about the whole attribution process since this is very relevant to incrementality (which is equivalent to 'they aren't just throwing money away'). But this doesn't necessarily mean that they want to deal with all the details themselves. This is my guess for the parent reply's intention.
In the podcasting industry, referral codes are used specifically so that advertisers can figure out how many conversions are coming from the podcast -- it's not enough to tell them, "X people heard the thing." They want to know whether or not it's worth advertising based on concrete user acquisition numbers.
AT&T recently put out an interview about their advertising strategy as a content company. The quote from that piece[0]:
> "Regardless of how you see a directed car ad, say, AT&T can then use geolocation data from your phone to see if you went to a dealership and possibly use data from the automaker to see if you signed up for a test-drive—and then tell the automaker, “Here’s the specific ROI on that advertising,” says Lesser. AT&T claims marketers are paying four times the usual rate for that kind of advertising."
And on a more fundamental level, it doesn't make sense to me why targeted ads would even be such a profitable industry in the first place if advertisers didn't care about increasing ROI per ad -- and that means improving click-through rates and conversion rates. I don't see how I wouldn't want attribution stats per-campaign if I was trying to improve my ad targeting, or doing AB tests on different marketing styles.
It is entirely possible that I don't understand the advertising industry very well, but from everything I've seen, advertisers do seem to care about attribution, a lot. Maybe click-through isn't the best way to measure that, but I don't see strong evidence that brand recognition or exposure is a more valuable target for advertisers to be pursuing than direct revenue impact.
[0]: http://fortune.com/longform/att-media-company/