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Advertising Attribution - Buyers and Users
There are several ways by which buyers and users in the global advertising attribution market can be categorized; they can be categorized by organization size (i.e., small, medium, large), role (e.g., marketing specialist, marketing manager, marketing director, chief marketing officer), decision-making authority (i.e., influencers, deciders, approvers), industry (e.g., telecommunications and information technology, retail, financial services), and nature of business (i.e., business-to-business, business-to-consumer, hybrid). Statistics suggest that buyers and users of advertising attribution solutions overlap. For these reasons, insights into these different types of segmentation were provided in place of the main buyer categories and the main user categories.
ORGANIZATION SIZE
- Markets and Markets, a market research firm, segments the global marketing attribution software market by organization size into small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises. This segmentation suggests that buyers in the advertising attribution market can be categorized by organization size into small businesses, medium-sized businesses, and large businesses.
- For its report on marketing attribution, marketing technology company Ascend2 polled 226 marketing professionals. It categorized these survey respondents into the following employment size groups: fewer than 50 employees, 50 to 500 employees, and over 500 employees. This information suggests that if buyers are to be segmented by organization size, the organization size groups can be defined in terms of the number of employees. Small businesses will be businesses with fewer than 50 employees, medium-sized businesses will be businesses with 50 to 500 employees, and large businesses will be businesses with over 500 employees.
ROLE
- The purchase of marketing performance and attribution technology is often led by the head of the marketing unit. According to marketing agency Walker Sands, the marketing roles that lead the decision-making process for the purchase of performance and attribution technology are as follows: chief marketing officer (22%), marketing consultant (13%), marketing vice president or director (4%), marketing coordinator or specialist (2%), marketing creative (2%), and marketing manager (1%).
- The marketing department is typically the team in charge of purchasing marketing technology, with the information technology department a far second. Following are the departments that indicate ownership of the purchase and management of marketing technology: marketing (41%), information technology (13%), marketing operations (12%), customer experience (9%), digital strategy (8%), demand generation (5%), e-commerce (4%), and sales (4%).
- For its report on the state of attribution, marketing attribution solution provider Visual IQ polled marketers from various levels of the organization. Eighteen percent were vice presidents, 37% were directors, 37% were managers, and 8% were ad hoc project managers. These figures suggest that the buying team is likely composed of people from different levels of the organization. It is expected that purchase approval lies in the hands of top management.
- Management of marketing technology is often the responsibility of the marketing operations, customer experience, or digital strategy unit. This suggests that the marketing operations, customer experience, and digital strategy units are typically the end users of attribution software.
- The units that are typically involved or consulted during the marketing technology purchase process are the marketing unit (78%), the executive unit (70%), the information technology unit (53%), the sales unit (40%), and the finance unit (31%).
DECISION-MAKING AUTHORITY
- Of Visual IQ's survey respondents, 24% were final purchase decision-makers, 59% were members of the purchase decision-making team, and 18% were people who have some influence on the purchase decision-making process. These figures suggest that the team making the attribution software purchase decision is likely composed of influencers, deciders, and approvers.
- Most marketing technology purchase teams are composed of two to five people. Seventy percent of marketing technology buyers indicate that their teams are composed of two to five people.
- IBM and Target Marketing report that marketing technology purchase requirements and selection criteria are defined by a single person in 24% of companies, a single team in 40% of companies, and a cross-functional team in 36% of companies.
INDUSTRY
- Markets and Markets segments the global marketing attribution software market by vertical into the following industries: retail, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and consumer packaged goods (CPG), consumer electronics and computing products, telecommunications and information technology (IT), banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), healthcare, travel and hospitality, and others, including education, transportation, and government. It reports that telecommunications and IT are the vertical holding the lion's share of the market. This information suggests that users in the advertising attribution market can be categorized by industry, and that telecommunications and IT are one of the biggest industries using advertising attribution.
NATURE OF BUSINESS
- The fact that, for their reports on attribution, marketing technology companies AdRoll and Ascend2 polled a mix of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies suggests that users in the advertising attribution market can also be segmented by the nature of the business. This inference is supported by the fact that LeadsRX, a provider of advertising attribution software, categorizes its use cases into B2B marketing and e-commerce.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
To identify the main categories of buyers and users in the advertising attribution market, we first reviewed industry reports, particularly those published by market research firms. These industry reports typically show how the market is segmented by type of customer. There are several sources in the public domain that describe the global marketing attribution software market, but they all can be traced back to the report published by Markets and Markets. This report shows that the global marketing attribution software market's customers can be segmented by organization size and vertical. It also indicates which vertical has the lion's share of the market.
Since categories of buyers and users may also mean specific roles in an organization, we also examined which job roles or positions were most commonly chosen as respondents to surveys about marketing or advertising attribution. Polls conducted by AdRoll, Visual IQ, and Ascend2 were among the surveys we consulted. The survey methodologies and the details these companies have provided about their survey respondents offer insights into the job positions or titles that are responsible for buying and/or using advertising attribution software.
Lastly, since advertising attribution software is under the umbrella of marketing technology, we consulted sources that describe in detail either the marketing technology buyer or the marketing technology buying process. We figured these sources may contain insights specific to the buyers and users of attribution solutions. This strategy proved effective as it led us to surveys commissioned by IBM, marketing agency Walker Sands, and business software review site TrustRadius. The results of these surveys offer insights into the roles that are typically involved in the marketing technology purchase process, and the size of the purchase team. Walker Sands's survey also touches briefly on the roles that lead performance and attribution technology purchases.
We observed that there are several ways by which buyers and users in the advertising attribution market, so instead of just presenting one type of segmentation, we decided to present all the insights we have gathered about these different types of buyer and user segmentation. We decided this was the best way to go considering that users and buyers overlap, and users and buyers can be segmented in different ways, namely, organization size, role, decision-making authority, industry, and nature of business.