How TikTok’s new attribution model can achieve full-funnel attribution

The advertising industry has long known that top-of-funnel marketing is important to capture the attention of potential consumers. But for performance marketers looking for insights that drive impact in their campaigns across the entire consumer journey, more measurement solutions are needed. 

“Clearly in today's landscape, we have to have good measurement that can go beyond the click,” said Jorge Ruiz, TikTok’s global head of marketing science, but he noted that the industry has been slow to adopt other approaches because of a lack of consistent data and sourcing. “We need aggregate privacy-led measurement and high-quality solutions to answer marketer questions,” he said.

Since late 2023, TikTok has been launching a variety of measurement tools, including its Attribution Analytics and third-party tools like multitouch attribution and post-purchase surveys. All these efforts aim to help marketers close the measurement gap that exists in the industry and be able to see a holistic picture. Now, instead of only seeing a limited view of their return on ad spend (ROAS) and cost per acquisition (CPA), advertisers are able to gain a deeper understanding of user behavior, from awareness to discovery to action.

Comprehensive analytics for an immersive experience

The engagement numbers that TikTok users regularly produce demonstrate spending power behind those #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt tags. Of the 70% of users who discover new brands or products on the platform,¹ 74% do further research,² and users are 1.5 times more likely to actually purchase a product they found through TikTok.³

In addition, after viewing an ad on TikTok, 92% of users took some form of action,⁴ be it visiting the advertiser’s site, completing or rewatching an ad or researching other users’ reviews of the brand.

However, not all conversions driven by TikTok can be fully captured if advertisers are using last-click models alone. As part of its new measurement tools, TikTok introduced an integration called Self Attribution Network (SAN) for app advertisers. With it, clients are able to view all conversions driven by TikTok on top of the existing attribution analysis provided by mobile measurement partners (MMP). 

“Working with TikTok and industry leaders, we're able to break down ad engagements into more granular metrics, such as engaged clicks and views, and use them to provide more transparency and enriched measurement," said Benjamin Cole, global senior director of strategic partnership development at mobile marketing analytics platform AppsFlyer. “The industry needed more dynamic ways to measure engagement types and intent signals to improve the way ads are measured and optimized.”

Simon Vishnevskiy, director of user acquisition at digital banking service Dave, shed some light on why the company decided to integrate with TikTok's SAN. 

"We've been implementing in-house attribution solutions internally in 2023—namely media mix modeling (MMM), user surveys and incrementality testing—that consistently showed that TikTok conversions were higher than what standard models were showing,” he said. “So it was really a data-driven decision for us to implement SAN.” 

Another benefit of SAN integration is that advertisers would be able to access an advanced metric called Engaged View-through Attribution (EVTA). When someone watches a video ad for more than 6 seconds, TikTok considers this an engaged view. EVTA also measures the conversions that take place after a user views an ad for 6 seconds or more, doesn't click immediately, and then goes on to convert within the attribution window of 1-day or 7-day. 

Revealing the full value of a view

Another thing that last-click-based measurement doesn’t account for is the amount of exposure a viewer has with a brand in the lead-up to clicking on “Purchase.” In fact, a TikTok Data Science Conversion Lift meta study in June 2023 found that click-based attribution models undervalue TikTok conversion by 73%. In addition, given today's evolution where the measurement supply chain needs to be built with consumer privacy at the core, nearly four out of five purchases driven by TikTok are misattributed or unattributed when relying on standard web analytics tools.

One of TikTok's marketing marketing partners Rockerbox also saw this gap in the industry. "Previously, advertisers looked at TikTok and knew they weren't able to measure the holistic TikTok value for impact,” said Ashley McAlpin, head of marketing at data-tracking and analysis company Rockerbox. “We knew that by building an integration that allowed us to connect views and clicks to revenue, we would be able to give advertisers the full insight into the channel's effectiveness.”

One brand that saw this immediate lift was Rockerbox client Tula, a 10-year-old probiotic skincare brand that started as a social-first brand. 

"TikTok became a huge priority for us when it began to pick up traction, but we lacked visibility into the effectiveness of our campaigns,” said Tula’s Director of Growth Marketing, Caroline Valenzano. She said that after the transition, the company’s ROAS jumped to more than five-times what they were seeing before. 

“It's just the natural evolution of our platform that product discovery on TikTok leads to intent and that leads to purchases across several industries and verticals,” said Bahar Bozdogan, TikTok’s product marketing lead. "We want to empower advertisers with the tools they need to appreciate the full value TikTok brings to their business. Either it's introducing brands to a new generation of audiences, or ensuring today’s audiences are tomorrow’s customers and evangelists."

Sources

1. TikTok Marketing Science Global Retail Path to Purchase Study 2021 conducted by Material

2. TikTok Marketing Science Global Shopping Ad Products Study 2022 conducted by Material February 2022

3. TikTok commissioned survey by Nielsen IQ in SEA, among 9800 recent users of social media users, March 2021

4. TikTok Marketing Science Global Time Well Spent Study (Global Study) Conducted by Kantar 2021