Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: Google Ads Attribution Models Now Support YouTube and Display Ads

Jill Goldstein - August 26, 2021

Customer journeys today are more complex than ever. There has been an overwhelming increase in online shopping due to COVID-19 and there seems to be an increasing number of devices in which you can purchase. Not to mention, there’s the challenge of bridging online research to offline purchase, which is happening more than ever. While there’s no clear-cut way of measuring all of this, attribution modeling sure does help give you a better understanding of how different ads contribute to the end purchase.

As of the first week of August, Google Ads has upgraded all non-last click attribution models to support both YouTube and Display campaigns. Prior to this, Google Ads was only using search and shopping campaigns in their attribution modeling.

Why is this an important change?

Both YouTube and Display campaigns constantly get undervalued as channels that contribute to the end purchase. One reason why this happens is because Google Ads conversions use a last click attribution model by default. So, while YouTube and Display campaigns are typically touchpoints in a customer journey, the last click prior to conversion is typically brand search. This means, that by default, these campaign types are not getting credit where credit is due. With this change, clicks that occur as a result of a YouTube or Display campaign will influence modeling. This will give more value to these two important campaign types within the Google Ads platform.

Also with this change, advertisers using data-driven attribution can also measure engaged views from YouTube. This means that data-driven attribution is smarter than ever in understanding the overall impact of different campaigns.

If you are a MoreVisibility client and would like more information about attribution modeling and the recent changes, contact your Client Strategist. If you are not a MoreVisibility client and would like additional information, please contact the experts at MoreVisibility