TOP-3 alternatives to Nielsen Attribution (Visual IQ)

Visual IQ, a Nielsen company, is a former multi-touch attribution (MTA) provider. Before Nielsen acquired it, Visual IQ was working in the direction of closed-loop attribution.

Closed loop is about tracking a customer’s journey from the first marketing touch all the way through to a completed sale. It basically meant closing the “loop” between marketing and sales.

In Nielsen’s lineup, instead of ‘attribution’, they now offer a Marketing Outcomes solution suite. To measure the success of marketing activities, Nielsen provides:

1. Brand Impact: An upper-funnel measurement tool. It evaluates social and display campaigns using brand-lift surveys. Key metrics include ad recall, awareness, and consideration.
2. Campaign lift: an incrementality testing solution.
3. Marketing Mix Modeling tool.

Seems like the limitations of multi-touch attribution prompted Nielsen to focus on alternatives like MMM and Incrementality testing. While effective, these methods come with their own set of challenges:

• Incrementality tests measure how specific channels or tactics boost sales. But they’re not ideal for freshly launched campaigns since they don’t offer instant feedback.
• MMM, on the other hand, looks at long-term data to help businesses decide how to split their budget among various channels. It’s great for big decisions, but it doesn’t provide real-time insights.

Let’s see what competitors have to say. Are there other ways to replace multi-touch attribution?

SegmentStream

SegmentStream is a beyond-cookie alternative to multi-touch attribution.

SegmentStream uses machine learning and 1st-party data to bridge the gaps created by GDPR, various tracking restrictions and cross-device.

Unlike MMM and Incrementality testing, SegmentStream is the all-in-one solution for day-to-day optimisation.

Its algorithms analyse hundreds of data points: from impressions, clicks, and CRM details to user behaviour on your website.

It recognises all touchpoints that guide users through the sales funnel, even if they don’t lead directly to a conversion.

Moreover, with the recently launched view-through attribution feature, you can confidently measure top-of-funnel campaigns like Social and Video, beyond just clicks.

INCRMNTAL

INCRMNTAL is another AI-based attribution platform.

Rather than conducting audience or GeoLift tests, the platform treats each operational marketing activity as micro-experiments.

So, when asking, “What was the incrementality of a TikTok campaign?”, INCRMNTAL dives deep into data modeling. It considers performance trends over varying time periods—weekends, weekdays, different months, and special occasions. Simultaneously, the platform examines how actions, such as adjusting Facebook bids or swapping Google creatives, influence KPIs.

Essentially, it correlates your everyday marketing activities with changes in performance.

Corvidae

Rounding out the top three AI attribution technologies to watch in 2023 is a solution from the company Corvidae.

Corvidae offers an AI-driven marketing attribution platform.

The platform collects raw clickstream data using a pixel. This multi-channel data is then organized and merged with offline data to chart user journeys. Ultimately, a neural network processes the data to provide attribution insights.