"The Mullet of Measurement”: Tackling Attribution with MasterClass, Skylark Marketing, & SelectQuote

Attribution remains one of the industry’s biggest challenges, prompting many marketers to waste as much as half of their budget. To get expert advice on how to deploy that spend more wisely, you need to check out this week’s installment of The Media Roundtable.

At this year’s CAO Summit, Giles Martin (EVP Strategy, Oxford Road) moderated a panel of experts focused on wrangling attribution with confidence. Sharing the stage with Giles were three bona fide attribution all-stars:

• Kezia Koo ( Fractional Growth Marketing Leader; ex-Indeed, Chegg, Amazon)

•  Brad Miller (SVP Marketing, SelectQuote)

• Jon Pease (Sr. Dir. Growth Marketing, MasterClass)

Together, they talked about attribution stacks, what MMMs can (and can’t) do, and the search for allies. Let’s dig in.

“MMM is like the mullet of measurement. It’s back in style, but only because everything else stopped working.” – Jon Pease (Sr. Dir. Growth Marketing, MasterClass)

Stacks on Stacks – Successful attribution needs an attribution stack. No single approach is enough, but our experts found attribution success with varied methods, including vanity URLs, HYDHAUs, pixels, geo tests, clean rooms, and MMMs. No marketer had the same attribution stack, but everyone used at least three methods. That doesn’t mean you need to copy another company’s stack. It just means that if you’re relying on a single source of truth, it helps to have a second opinion (or at least a tie-breaking vote).

MMM’s True Purpose – Media Mix Modeling (MMM) doesn’t need to be a marketing oracle. Instead, think of it as a smoke detector: A method that sounds alarms on inefficiencies in search and highlights underinvesting. Those MMM alarms can lead to changes, but you need to confirm any improvements through another attribution source.

Find Allies – Whatever attribution approach you’re advocating for, you’ll need allies outside of marketing to back you up. Make friends with experts in data science, finance, and beyond. Some attribution efforts are slow and costly, but worth it. They’ll never be greenlit, though, if the marketing department is the only supporter. So find people who want the same thing as you, but who see problems differently, as their recommendations will carry more weight.

For more insights from marketers winning the attribution war, check out the full episode below.