In no area is attribution more important to determine the success, opportunity and true ROI of marketing efforts than in affiliate marketing. Through affiliate marketing, the affiliate partner promoting the product is not compensated until their efforts generate a sale. This incentive greatly reduces the risk. However, if the attribution model and publisher structure of the campaigns are not set up correctly, there is significant opportunity to waste dollars and miss out on the true story of marketing performance.

We all know that it is unlikely that the path leading to a consumer’s purchase is direct. As an individual user interacts and engages with various marketing efforts and campaigns, each effort contributes a piece to the attribution puzzle contributing towards the eventual conversion. That is not the way affiliate marketing has worked historically. “The affiliate standard for attribution is to measure and reward based off of last click,” said Rob Juarez of Impact Radius’ Omnichannel Market Intelligence group, “In order to grow their program, marketers need to look beyond last click. Marketers need to implement a system that measures incrementality and value across their entire conversion path.”

The first step to incorporate attribution into your affiliate marketing is to ensure that you have the data you need to build the attribution model. Whether you are using a rules-based model such as time decay or position-based, or a dynamic attribution model, getting access to and control of the data is the first and most important step. While many marketers are moving towards a dynamic attribution model that leverage machine learning, it is most important that your solution can be customized for the individual marketer.

At the end of the day, an affiliate program that is set up with the correct attribution model rewards the publishers that have the biggest impact on driving sales, and dramatically reduces the opportunity and impact of publishers who can take advantage of traditional last click only attribution. This is good for the marketers and good for the publishers, helping to positively impact the reputation of affiliate marketing as a channel.