How to Solve the Google Ads Attribution Problem Caused by Performance Max

[00:00:11] John: So let's get into this, John, which is where do we stand now in terms of attribution generally and really in reference to what it has to do with Google Ads. we kind of went through the iOS 14 era of that being a a, Place where all of us were trying to find answers. Mm-hmm.

[00:00:28] John: A lot of us turned to third party tools and to help with that and aid with that. And now where I think we find ourselves is the third party tools that are out there. Have grown to be business operating centers for some of us that have started to use it as well as measuring attribution. And I feel like.

[00:00:47] John: Some of us have a good answer of here's what's happening when you do this, and some of us it's still murky and for clients it's still murky. Meanwhile, the platforms at least on the meta side are, on a click basis becoming more accurate with model data or with more real data, not as modeled as it once was.

[00:01:05] John: what's your opinion on this now? Of what the landscape is and where do people get caught up? Like what's the common things that you hear that you're like, I wanna shout this from the rooftops. Like, this is actually what I think. what's interesting with with Google is the introduction of performance.

[00:01:20] John: Max has thrown a gigantic wrench in all things attribution. Because Google moved towards a data driven model of, of its own attribution within Google Ads. And then Performance Max opened up, YouTube, G S P, search shopping, display discovery, and built in remarketing that now takes credit for all things new repeat and, stolen from Omni from other channels.

[00:01:41] John: So I think that the, situation that we are in now is to look less in platform. And to look into more detailed analytics inside of third party attribution and not necessarily take them as true face value, but track trends the conversion path length and the conversion path. Variables such as like a click on.

[00:02:02] John: Facebook, a view on Facebook, then a view on YouTube, then a click in Google, and then a sign up for an email. Then two weeks later, a conversion. All of those things have to be identified as commonalities for us to really be able to do our jobs well As digital marketers working together with other agencies, or if you're doing everything into one, truly identifying what that top conversion path is.

[00:02:22] John: And I think that the conversion path is something that people don't quite look at, and they look at individual channel roaz, whether it's with inside of, Google or Facebook, or with inside of a third party attribution tool like Nor Beam, and sometimes take it for too much face value. Tracking the trends and identifying the conversion paths will then give you more information as to why those metrics look the way they do.

[00:02:42] John: The differences between the click and view model, for example, is gonna say, Hey, a person clicked here, or a person viewed this and then clicked at a potentially different campaign. So understanding just the variances between those two and then tracking those trends is going to be important. the one thing that I always tell people is, Look at your overall MER media efficiency ratio that is going to tell you the overall efficiency of everything working together.

[00:03:07] John: Identify what's working the best, reallocate what is not having an actual impact on your bottom line, and reallocate it to what you can identify working the best, which is those top conversion paths and tracking those trends. When it make one change, how does it overall affect everything? We have to be better marketers by working together. And we typically won't work with clients if it's like, well, Facebook's doing good, but Google isn't, or vice versa. It's not necessarily the point. We don't wanna pin them against each other. The client still wants to show up everywhere, but gets upset when they show up sometimes, multiple times each.

[00:03:38] John: So we have to really lean into higher amount of brand awareness and attribution on multiple channels and less into who's doing better, because there's more overlap than anybody knows about. Yeah, I think that's so true. And I think to me, what gives me clarity on that answer is I often feel as an advertiser we run an agency too, and I often feel like.

[00:03:59] John: Some days I feel like I have the answers really clearly, and some days it feels muddy still, right? Mm-hmm. And it feels like, not muddy, but it feels more just overwhelming the amount of, ways that this can be described. Mm-hmm. And I think that there's a certain position in the marketplace that puts people on their heels, myself included, which is look, all of you are doing the wrong thing.

[00:04:20] John: You're looking at the wrong thing. You're measuring the wrong thing. And now it's. gonna continue to be confusing. And that's just what it is, basically. Mm-hmm. Or there's this other metric that I'm looking at that you don't know about yet. it's not black and white, like you said.

[00:04:34] John: It's not one's doing better, one, , like pitting them against each other. It is. And, it's multifaceted and it's incredibly complex. And especially for brands that are spending even more, the more you spend, the more complex it can be. And I often think sometimes, The smaller clients that we have overcomplicate or the smaller agencies, we overcomplicate it sometimes when we don't need to, there's an inverse relationship in some aspects of it.