>Our data sharing agreements allow us to sidestep
the intermediate metrics that are often used.<p>I've looked through the paper and this bit showed some inadequacy of the research process. I may agree that branding campaigns are really hard to track and the study conclusions may apply to them. Running branding campaigns without a clear conversion event is dumb though.<p>On the other side of the spectrum performance-driven(cost per action, cost per lead, cost per sale) campaigns that include monitoring of all parts of customer journey* offer precise ROI data that doesn't need inference.<p>This study is limited in its scope and doesn't take into consideration the best methods for tracking ROI for digital ads, concentrating on still popular but outdated method of branded advertising.<p>*Stimulus-Visit-Lead-Repeat visit-Sale-Repeat sale-Recommendation
1) I'm suprised that this kind of work is going on at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc. Maybe I'm just unaware, but I thought that was interesting.<p>2) The conclusion of this paper is daunting. It sounds like it's impossible to reliably know if a campaign was -10/+10% ROI. Only if the campaign was =50% was it then just 'difficult' and not impossible.<p>Very cool stuff Randall and Justin.