An end to black box solutions – the case for open box attribution

As technology advances and the increasing use of AI and Machine learning continues to impact marketing attribution and analytics, many black box solutions have come forward claiming to be able to solve all your attribution needs whilst giving no information or visibility of the processes it takes to get there.

For many marketers, their use has probably crept up on them – fuelled by unprecedented growth in the last 10 years in digital channels like Google Ads and Meta. And the rapid expansion of in-house reporting capabilities for marketing measurement on these platforms. 

Here we consider: 

  • What exactly are black box solutions?
  • Why black box solutions don’t cut it for analytics and marketing attribution
  • The rise of the open box solution
  • How to go full open box with Corvidae

What exactly are black box solutions?

So, our starting point for our analysis is some context on black box solutions themselves. 

Essentially, black box solutions are systems that analyse and interpret data sets and produce useful information based on this analysis – but crucially don’t reveal any information about their internal workings. So, at the crudest level, they take an input data set, perform analytics on the data and provide an analytical output, minus any sort of transparency or interpretability as to how they came to those conclusions. 

Rapid advances in technology, artificial intelligence and Machine Learning have seen an equally rapid rise in the development of black box solutions as platform providers look to maximize the value and revenue potential of their solutions. 

Up until this point, black box solutions like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Performance Max (Google Ads) and Meta Advantage+ have required that marketers blindly trust their inner workings, but many are now increasingly questioning their veracity – for example, our own research suggests that 80% of marketers are concerned about potential bias in their AdTech reporting

So, there is a real trust deficit issue with these solutions.

Why black box solutions don’t cut it for analytics and marketing attribution 

So, what are some of the limitations that marketers are finding in the type of black box solutions they are using in their advertising and marketing measurement mix? 

We think there are 3 key limitations: 

 1 – Cookies are completely unable to show the true customer journey

There isn’t an easier way to say this, but the reality is that cookie-based solutions like GA and Adobe Analytics have been selling a lie for some time now. 

Without a ‘window’ into the black box that is their respective reporting solutions, marketers have been asked to put blind faith in over-simplistic attribution models and the reporting data being put in front of them. 

The problem is, by their very nature, cookie-based black box solutions are simply unable to show the true extent of the customer journey. Broken cookie-based journeys, which fail to accurately track users as they switch from one device to another, are wholly inadequate and are responsible for a multitude of sins. From significantly over-valuing lower funnel activity like retargeting – to completely disconnecting valuable touchpoints from the conversion entirely, cookies, truly, are broken. 

2 – Black box solutions have locked marketers into walled gardens with spiralling CPAs

As these platforms have continued to add users and eyeballs, marketers have increasingly become dependent on these walled gardens and have piled marketing spend into them – according to Statista 57% of total ad spend goes into either Facebook or Google.

The side effect has been to lock them into a spiral of increasing CPAs, as these cookie-based solutions have consistently overvalued lower funnel activity – creating huge amounts of demand for a finite amount of space at that end of the funnel. And the resulting surge in media costs. 

In fact, Meta CPMs have increased an incredible 720% in 10 years, which is against the backdrop of Android (Google) plans to copy iOS (Apple) and moving to an opt-in model for advertising which will also impact acquisition performance. In the meantime, Google Ad CPCs have almost doubled since 2014, and this is unlikely to improve against a backdrop of Google moving to an opt-in model.

3 – Black box solutions are also limiting impact in Programmatic

High-tech, 3rd party data and operating costs within closed black box solutions are also limiting the impact that marketers are having, and having the effect of driving spend into walled gardens. 

Most Programmatic ad spend is allocated to cannibalistic retargeting due to the high cost of your tech stack, 3rd party data and very poor inventory failing to show ads to actual humans (according to ANA 21% of digital ad impressions now occur on MFA websites).

In fact, over 1/3rd of spend is lost to Buying Placement even before an ad is shown!

The rise of the open box solution

Frustration with the opaque nature of black box solutions and their lack of transparency increasingly means that marketers are looking for open box solutions to provide the level of control and flexibility they need. 

But what can they offer? 

Here are just some of the benefits our own Corvidae AI driven attribution platform delivers as an open box solution:

Gives you visibility of the entire customer journey

Unlike cookie-enabled black box solutions like Google Analytics, Corvidae does a much better job of tracking complex, multi-device journeys and valuing – not only the ‘easy to track’ lower funnel touchpoints just before conversion – but each and every touchpoint right across the customer journey. 

By using AI and Machine Learning to effectively rebuild these journeys Corvidae can generate user paths that are 2 to 3 times longer than Google Analytics, and provide full visibility of these customer paths in a way that enables marketers to take back full control including allocating spend where it really counts. Corvidae also ensures that typically hard-to-reach higher funnel media which black box solutions fail to ‘see’ is taken into account.     

Rebuild your underlying data in a transparent way

One of the key issues with black box solutions is that you have no way of knowing what happens to your data ‘inside the box’, and in each of the increasingly siloed walled gardens you are committing spend to. 

We democratise that process by effectively ingesting data from the black box advertising and analytics platforms you are using, and then rebuilding it by joining it to your website’s click stream data – in a way that boosts data accuracy from 20% to 95+%. We do this by using our patented stitching technology to stitch together longer customer journeys that can be used for more effective attribution. 

Choose the attribution model that fits your needs 

From here, this newly rebuilt data is available for attribution and it is possible to overlay a range of attribution models.

But, unlike black box solutions, we are not prescriptive in terms of dictating the attribution models you should choose. The beauty of the re-stitched data is that it allows marketers to overlay a variety of attribution models and to assess the one that most closely meets their needs and use case. Our LSTM model uses AI and Machine Learning techniques to provide an uncannibalised view which values the impact of each and every touchpoint on the customer journey. But if your use case needs to apply Last-Click then you have the flexibility to do that alongside.  

Our role in that is to give full visibility of the process and to give you full access to our team of in-house data scientists, to answer your questions and give you the confidence you need to have in the data Corvidae is putting in front of you.   

Share enhanced data with your existing AdTech

Providing actionable data and insight is the name of the practicality game.

This is why we provide the capability to take these longer stitched paths – and also take the data-driven attribution model which is predicting conversion (and generating a data-driven attribution model on the basis of each of those events contributing towards a conversion) –  and use that to deliver automation and improved ROI inside your existing instance of Google Ads. 

So, an open box approach to sharing data that puts black box solutions to shame!

And the results are impressive, as you can see below from a live client example, where an increase in ROAS of 89% was accompanied by a 46% decrease in Customer Acquisition Cost and drop in Cost Per Conversion of 34%.

Exactly the kind of optimisation improvements you need to combat already rising CPAs that are only going to get worse with the loss of cookies and the impending move to opt-in advertising that Android have on the horizon. 

Go full open box with Corvidae 

 Do you need to break free of the constraints of black box solutions? Why not schedule demo of Corvidae our patented, AI-driven attribution solution and:

  • Remove the impact of data silos and get a single, unified view of the customer journey 
  • Benefit from an open box approach to rebuilding your marketing data
  • Drive ROAS up and CPA down from your existing, chosen channel activity on platforms like Google Ads

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