Cross-Device Attribution Still Difficult for Marketers

Significant gap seen between cross-device priorities and capabilities

Understanding consumers’ behavior as they switch between devices remains one of the toughest challenges facing marketers today. According to recent research investigating marketers’ digital capabilities, the problem doesn’t seem to be getting any easier.

In a March 2016 survey by Econsultancy investigating the gaps between digital priorities and capabilities at companies in North America, “matching customers across multiple devices” was mentioned as a digital priority by nearly three-quarters of the marketers polled. Yet only 14% of marketers in the same survey said their company had the capability to handle such matching, a gap of 60 percentage points.

Even though cross-device attribution did not have the biggest gap between company priorities and capabilities, additional data from Econsultancy emphasizes the challenge that the tactic poses for many organizations. When asking the same group of executives about the consumer-related capabilities of their companies, only 39% said they were able to understand their customers’ cross-device behaviors, lower than any other capability mentioned.

More marketers intend to make cross-device attribution a priority in the year to come. Additional surveys from sources like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) suggest that marketers in the US plan to devote more of their time and organizational resources to cross-channel measurement and attribution in 2016.

eMarketer

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