Start-Up Watch COD:Encore Media Metrics provides measurement, attribution, and reporting for paid, earned and owned media

Over the past several weeks I have put up a number of posts on attribution and the role of earned media in overall marketing performance. I am convinced that BOTH will be recognized as critical considerations by more and more brands in the months and years ahead.

Encore Media Metrics is a New York- and Texas-based SaaS solutions provider that offers campaign measurement, attribution and reporting to brands and agencies. Encore’s solution addresses the total scope of digital measurement and attribution. In addition to attribution for paid and owned media, Encore also offers a patent-pending solution to attribute credit to social media.

While Encore is a new company, its solution is not. The underlying platform was developed over the past five years by the founder’s former agency as a proprietary service for its clients. With the recent sale of the agency, the technology was spun out and Encore was launched as a standalone business that can service any brand or agency seeking to drive more effective online marketing.

Attributing value to the marketing vehicles at the top of the funnel – like banners – is essential if brands are to maximize their total sales and profit. Too often, brands focus the bulk of their resources at the bottom of the funnel, because simple last click attribution models overweight bottom of the funnel activities.

This leads to volume plateaus because the number of people at the bottom of the funnel is directly related to the number being brought in at the top. No matter how effective your bottom of the funnel tactics are, if fewer people are beginning the conversion process, fewer still will finish.

According to Encore, attributable credit for display ads may be 50-400% higher than a last-click report would show. Even at the low end of that range, that’s a big delta, and may be just the sort of factor that is holding your brand back from greater success.

There appear to be four pillars to the value proposition here:

1. Full funnel attribution. The revenue impact of all tactics is measured with an advanced attribution model that recognizes the importance of awareness and consideration drivers in addition to the conversion tactics.

2. Social media attribution. Rather than simply focusing on paid media tactics, Encore Metrics also measures and reports on the impact of various social media activities within the overall campaign ecosystem. As social takes an increasing portion of the total budget, this is an absolutely critical task.

3. SaaS model. Encore metrics is a cloud-based solution that agencies can plug into without changes to their infrastructure, and it can integrate with existing ad management tools like DFA and Atlas.

4. Affordability. Perhaps because their founders are so familiar with the financial dynamics of the ad biz, they have priced the platform aggressively. They claim that even small agencies can avail themselves of this solution.

I’ve seen some of their reports, and was impressed by how clear, simple, and succinct they present information. This is also very important in an agency world of fewer people analyzing increasing amounts of information.

No one can predict the impact that accurate attribution could have to your bottom line. But research indicates that it could be significant. Encore Metrics offers a viable solution to consider as you work to capture some of that heretofore wasted value.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.