Semcasting Offers Proof of Performance with New Attribution Platform
If you’re a marketer who has attempted to evaluate campaign results using attribution data, you understand the inherent challenges that come with treating attribution as a measurement metric. Walled gardens have traditionally prevented marketers from using attribution for audience verification, similar to viewability or fraud detection, but a new platform from the data-as-a-service company Semcasting is changing that.
Semcasting’s self-serve platform, dubbed The Attributor, aims to empower marketers to treat attribution as an audience verification metric. It employs a usage-based pricing model, which makes it a more inexpensive alternative for marketers who’ve grown accustomed to modeling fees associated with attribution.
“The main reasons that The Attributor advances the state of marketing attribution lies in the core matching technology and the transparency we are bringing to the process,” explains Semcasting CEO Ray Kingman. “In terms of technology, we are the first attribution solution that is full omni-channel and deterministic. Our core technology turns impressions, web visits, store visits, CRM purchases, emails, phone numbers, and trade areas into a common ID.”
Kingman says The Attributor is not dependent on sampling or models with consulting service commitments, which allows Semcasting to reposition attribution as an in-line verification process that exposes whether the audience selected is the actual audience viewing the marketing.
“Are those viewers engaging and are they ultimately buying what is being sold? Transparency into the audience informs marketers on which audience and which tactics will improve results,” Kingman says.
While The Attributor’s matching technology has been in use for the better part of a year—with selected brands in the health insurance, off-road vehicle manufacturing, professional sports, and finance industries—Kingman says the primary focus up to this point has been on verifying the audience against media impressions or location behaviors.
It was through this process that Kingman, along with his team at Semcasting, learned about the nature of what brands are looking for, and discovered that at least half of the brands with which Semcasting was working would have preferred to have attribution serve as a core part of what they do in their marketing departments on a regular basis.
As a result, Semcasting designed The Attributor to be a holistic solution that sits on top of the company’s matching technology but also allows brands to operate attribution studies and perform optimization of tactics and spend on their own.
Making The Attributor self-serve was another important decision for Semcasting. Offering the product as a self-service solution means attribution can be fully integrated into the marketing planning process, rather than being strictly an episodic post-campaign event.
Semcasting’s new launch of The Attributor is part of a larger movement within the industry to offer more verification of the value that the latest marketing solutions are providing to major brands.
As a company that provides mission-critical offline and online targeted audience for brand clients, Kingman says it’s especially important that Semcasting is able to back up its claims with proof of performance.
“Proof of performance and transparency are the two objectives that we hear our clients asking for,” he says. “If we deliver proof of successful outcomes with less overhead and no consulting spin, we become a more trusted and popular audience provider in the markets we care about.”
Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.
