AOL sets out to show UK advertisers it is solving the multi-screen paradox

Marketers have been trying to tackle the multi-screen paradox for years and AOL’s latest solution for multi-touch attribution (MTA) sounds similar to the likes of Google and Facebook. However, the media owner believes Convertro has enough to go toe to toe with the more established offerings.

The reason; it is able to offer buyers a 97 per cent guarantee that the person they’ve paid to reach, regardless of whether it's online or offline, is them, a match rate it claims its rivals can’t match. The accuracy is backed by a 93 per cent match rate with cross device tracking on its Advertising.com, which has been independently verified by Comscore.

The statistics from the nucleus of AOL’s pitch to advertisers, which presents Convertro as able to build a “user profile at user level” on either its own sites or third party space. AOL’s user-centric proposition means advertisers can pipe their own user data from channels such as search or affiliate into Convertro, which then attributes the channels, media tactics and tactics that are driving sales.

It all happens on the fly with the tool able to link to demand side platforms (DSPs) and real-time bidding (RTBs) to adapt programmatic plans in real time, while also giving advertisers the ability to model different scenarios in order to allocate their spend better. This isn’t just limited to online with Convertro capable of tracking users across TV and radio, a critical capability now that consumers are moving between channels at speed.

Alex Timbs, head of commercial product strategy at AOL, said it all amounts to a single access point for brands to link “offline to online and online to offline”. Data is integrated across sales channels to include digitally matched bricks and mortar figures.

[That link] has “never been done before”, added TImbs though some advertisers have tried to quantify these touch points by amassing their own ad tech stacks, which have come to encompass amalgamation of different systems.

Through Convertro, AOL hopes to wean advertisers off their self-assembled efforts by mitigating the very reason they turned to them for a competitor edge in the first place.

“Advertisers don’t want to touch a piece of tech which isn’t theirs to tell them what to do,” said Timbs.

AOL is aggressively building its programmatic offering, in which Convertro will be key, to sell more ads to third party sites. Furthermore, the company is not only focused on delivering ads across different devices but also across different formats such as video and display.

“There’s an open aspect to this tech so that advertisers can use it anywhere they want,” added Timbs.

“It doesn’t have to be on AOL properties. It can be wherever they want on any other DSP.”

Convertro’s charge into the UK forms part of AOL’s wider efforts to erect a full service ad tech proposition. It has a DSP and an SSP to sit alongside Convertro and at some point Timbs said they will all “come together”.

AOL bought Convertro last May for $101m in response to marketing attribution reaching an inflection point. The value of quantifying touchpoints is not lost on marketers though the need to gain this insight has gained greater significance in the wake of more expansive media plans and programmatic consequently covering more channels.

Timbs said: “You’re never going to lose that last click piece but you are always going to have the other channels backed in. Last click will get a smaller portion of the revenue but at least all the other channels get their fair share.”