Introduction

With the Revenue Assists feature, you can customize how much value to attribute to clicks that lead to a conversion.

Note: At the current time, revenue assists can only be set up in Marin Search. From there, this setting can be accessed by clicking on Admin, selecting the Revenue tab, and then choosing Attribution Settings from the left-hand menu.

Please note the settings on this page only affect clients using our tracking solution, Marin Tracker (JavaScript as well as the Marin Tracker Redirect implementation).

See it in action

Get up to speed on Marin Tracker and revenue assists even faster with our video walkthrough. 
 

Conversion Value Weighting

This setting allows you to set how much credit each click in a converting path receives. The default setting is Last Click, which means only the click prior to the conversion event receives all the credit for the conversion. You can choose change the weighting model between Exponential or U-Shaped. The Exponential model gives more weight to either the first or last click. The U-Shaped model give more weight to the first and last click and less weight to the intermediate clicks.

Within each model you can choose to change the attribution weighting by moving the slider, which updates the graph showing how the conversion value will be attributed. For Exponential weighting, setting the slider to the far left will attribute all the conversion value to the first click on the path to conversion. For U-Shaped weighting, setting the slider to the far left will attribute the conversion value evenly across clicks.

Note: For Cross Client Attribution, only 100% first click or 100% last click attribution can be used; Exponential and U-Shaped attribution will not work.  In order to work properly, all client accounts on Cross Client Attribution must have first or last click attribution set up.  You can learn more about Cross Client Attribution here.

Limit Assists to Last 'N' Clicks

This setting allows you to limit the sharing of the conversion value to the previous N clicks. Based on your business model, this setting may or may not apply. For longer sales cycles, we recommend using the default setting (share conversion value across all contributing clicks). For shorter sales cycles, it is advisable to limit the conversion sharing to fewer clicks.

Impact on Bidding & Reporting

Sharing the conversion value across multiple clicks will impact bidding in the following way:
 

• Based on the settings on this page, conversion value will be spread across multiple keywords in the click path. This additional value (Assist Revenue) will be taken into consideration for bidding purposes.
• The conversion value to be distributed is determined by the Strategy settings of the last-click keyword.
• As always, the Gross Profit column in the grid displays the aggregate conversion value used bidding on that day. This column includes the Assist Revenue for the keyword, group, or campaign.
• Separately, the Assist Conversions and Assist Revenue columns in the grid show the additional conversions and conversion value attributed to the object based on the assist settings. The Assist Adj $ column shows the conversion value that was reattributed to other objects.
• Note that assists on multiple conversion events are not tracked separately. Our application combines all assists on multiple conversion events into a single assist column. The conversion value that will be spread across multiple keywords will be based on the value assigned to the conversion event in the Strategy of the last-click keyword.
• The Conversions and Revenue columns in the grid will not change as a result of settings on this page. These columns will continue to be last-click based.
• Note that changing conversion value assist settings will not affect historical data.
• Note that the assist columns (Assists, Assist Rev $, Assist Adj $) use date of click attribution. This is to ensure that the assist values are attributed correctly for bidding purposes.
   

Below is an example of how Assist Tracking works. Consider the following keyword-Strategy mapping and Strategy settings:

If Last Click attribution is used (default setting), the following values would be used for bidding and reporting:
 

If conversion value is spread evenly, the $10 CPA of the last-click Strategy is spread across both keywords for bidding purposes. Note that the reporting columns do not change.
 

Ability to Upload Assist Data

For Platform Tracker client, the Assists, Assist Rev and Assist Adj columns will be automatically added to the revenue upload job.

However you can also manually upload these data via Revenue upload job by including those columns in the revenue upload file. This functionality needs you to have defined your own assist scheme.

Additional information about Revenue Assists