Attribution & Secrets To Scaling with Vanessa Branco

As the digital advertising landscape continues to evolve, understanding the impact and effectiveness of advertising efforts is crucial for businesses looking to optimize their marketing strategies. In a recent episode of the Forbes podcast, digital marketing expert Vanessa Branco shares her insights on the power of advertising attribution and how it can significantly impact a company’s return on investment (ROI).

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With over 15 years of experience working with startups, Fortune 100 companies, and publicly traded companies, Vanessa Branco is a seasoned professional in digital branding and marketing, media optimization, performance-based marketing, and customer retention. She currently serves as the Vice President of Business Development for a white label trading desk and runs her own digital consultancy, VersaNine, providing hands-on expertise to brands looking to in-house their media buying.

During the podcast episode, Branco shares her journey in the digital advertising industry, starting as an Advertising Manager for a publicly-traded company that was advertising in-house and operating sites including screensavers.com. She highlights the evolution of advertising methods and priorities, which have remained consistent in acquiring customers, driving revenue, and increasing ROI, but have diversified in their approach.

Branco emphasizes the importance of attribution in digital advertising, citing her experience at screensavers.com where manual reporting and a constant need to acquire new customers led her to start slow and gradually adopt attribution. She also reminisces about the early days of affiliate networks, pixels, and the “Halo effect” – a term used to describe the positive impact of digital advertising on other marketing channels.

Branco shares anecdotes from her experience in the industry, including her early efforts to prove that display advertising worked during the MySpace era, and the challenges of over-counting and inaccurate reporting. She highlights the game-changing impact of attribution in providing accurate insights into the performance of different creatives, affiliate programs, search terms, and vendors. By leveraging attribution, Branco explains how budget allocation can be optimized based on data-driven decision making.

One of the key takeaways from Branco’s insights is the importance of moving slowly and getting buy-in from stakeholders when implementing attribution. She emphasizes that it takes time, usually 3 to 6 months, to fully understand and leverage the power of attribution in a company’s marketing efforts.

Branco also shares how attribution can go beyond just tracking performance metrics, but also provide insights into the “why” behind a customer’s decision-making process, which can be invaluable for future campaigns. She advises on the optimal number of creatives to test simultaneously and provides recommendations on how long to test creatives for optimal results.

In conclusion, Branco’s expertise in advertising attribution shines through in this insightful podcast episode. Her experiences and anecdotes highlight the game-changing impact of attribution in digital advertising, providing businesses with data-driven insights to optimize their marketing strategies and improve ROI. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, leveraging attribution should be a priority for businesses looking to stay competitive and drive results in their advertising efforts.