Good morning: Attribution is complex

One effect of the physical/digital multi-channel environment in which marketing takes place is that attribution is more complex than ever.

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Good morning, Marketers, it’s time to acknowledge complexity!

In last Thursday’s newsletter, the quote of the day came from marketing strategist Kathleen Schaub. In part, it read: “Marketing just cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. Marketing works as a system and attribution obscures interdependencies.” 

In isolation, the quote seemed to be casting doubt on the possibility of effective attribution. Yesterday, however, Kathleen sent me a link to a detailed white paper she put together showing that attribution is just extremely complicated, and providing actionable advice on how to undertake attribution in this complex physical + digital environment.

“Complexity-wise marketing” she calls it. Worth a read. There’s a link in her blog post here.

Kim Davis



Editorial Director

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About the author

Kim Davis
Staff
Kim Davis is currently editor at large at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Shortly thereafter he joined Third Door Media as Editorial Director at MarTech.

Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.

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