From buying a TV to planning a holiday vacation, it takes consumers, on average, four clicks before completing a transaction online.¹ Some of these clicks matter more than the others, yet 40% of businesses still use first-touch or last-touch attribution when measuring ad performance.²

In order to understand the true value of each of those clicks, you need an attribution model that better reflects the new fragmented mobile-first consumer journey. Data-driven attribution (DDA) in DoubleClick Search solves this by helping you better understand the value of each ad click throughout your customer’s journey.

Create a model that fits your needs

Machine learning sets DDA in DoubleClick Search apart from rules-based attribution models. Unlike those models, DDA calculates the value of each ad click using your Floodlight conversion data, including conversions that happen across devices and browsers. By looking at all the clicks that happen across all those conversions, DDA can assign more value to the clicks that are driving conversions, and less value to those that don't.

Over time, your model will become more accurate as more data becomes available to inform your bids with. You can also customize your DDA model to fit your business goals.

DDA gets results

Here’s how DDA has already created value for advertisers around the world:



“Data-driven attribution has taken our campaign performance to the next level. By creating tailored attribution models for both new and existing customer journeys, we’re able to easily see which campaigns are contributing to our chosen business objective,” says Matt Darbon, Online Marketing at Waitrose. The British supermarket chain decreased its cost-per-order by nearly 40% while significantly increasing sales volume.




Walks of Italy provides immersive tour experiences around Italy's major cities and attractions. Using DDA and Smart Bidding, the brand saw a 31% increase in ticket sales, compared to 11% for other non-brand campaigns not running on DDA bid strategies. It also saw 25% growth in overall return on investment (ROI).




Volkswagen Group, one of the world’s leading vehicle manufacturers, saw sales leads increase by nearly 6% and cost-per-lead decrease by 17% in Brazil with DDA.






TalkTalk, the UK’s leading value-for-money telecoms provider, partnered with mSix to implement DDA for its campaigns. As a result, the brand saw its total volume of sales increase by 9% while maintaining its cost-per-acquisition.




Make DDA work for your business

Here are some best practices to help ensure your data-driven attribution models are customized to meet your business goals:

  • Apply your customer and market knowledge. Create and apply DDA specific labels to your campaigns based on the role that Search activity plays in the customer journey. Learn more
  • Check the accuracy of your model with Floodlight columns. Once you’ve created your custom DDA model, create Floodlight columns for DDA conversions to ensure your model is set up correctly. Learn more
  • Track your performance against other models. For easier monitoring, add your DDA model to your favorite reports. Create a custom column that shows the percentage difference in conversion value assigned to keywords, campaigns and labels between your attribution models. Learn more
  • Re-evaluate keywords, campaigns and labels for performance. Now that you’re measuring the value of every click, you may discover that some of your campaigns are performing better than before. Make sure your budget and bids are updated based on the insights provided by DDA. Learn more
  • Automate your bids based on your new model. To get the full benefits of DDA, use Smart Bidding with your DDA model to automatically set optimal bids across your campaigns. Learn more

Learn more about data-driven attribution in the DoubleClick Search Help Center.

¹ Google Analytics MCF data for single device measurement, Feb. 2017
² Google/Forrester, "Cross Channel Attribution is Needed to Drive Marketing Effectiveness," May 2014, U.S.
Posted by Michel van Luijtelaar
Measurement & Attribution Specialist, DoubleClick Search