Abakus Launches ‘Game-Changing Attribution’ Solution to Measure the True Marginal Value of Marketing Campaigns

New solution applies economic game theory to marketing attribution; leading travel brand and House of Kaizen among first adopters

NEW YORK – Abakus, a marketing attribution solution that applies economic game theory to measure the true marginal contribution of marketing campaigns, channels, partners and placements, has been launched.

“Abakus is arguably the first to provide an effective cross-media view by allowing for everything that an advertiser is doing – whether paid, earned or owned, on or offline – by using a baseline that can account for all the factors that might impact the success of marketing campaigns.”

The solution – the first to use strictly empirical data and be free of any manually conceived or managed attribution model – is a proprietary ‘calculation engine’ that measures the performance of every ad to understand the incremental contribution of any channel, provider or placement across an advertiser’s marketing campaigns. It accounts for all unmeasured marketing activity through its unique baseline measurement methodology.

A leading travel brand and its digital media agency, House of Kaizen (formerly Web Liquid), are among a wave of initial clients using the solution to regularly inform their online media buying decisions. Abakus data and insights are helping drive House of Kaizen’s media strategy for a leading travel brand enabling it to optimize to the best-performing tactics.

Alain Portmann, partner, head of media and insights, at House of Kaizen, said of Abakus: “Knowing that last view and last click are outmoded ways to attribute credit across online campaigns and doing something about it are very different things. Abakus is the first solution we’ve seen that computes all live campaign data to reveal the marginal contribution across any variable, including channel, provider, media placement and execution. It does away with the need for assumptive model-based systems and gives us a higher degree of confidence that all of an advertiser’s marketing activity, is being taken into account. On the back of this trial we plan to use Abakus regularly to provide insight into the performance of different partners and executions across our travel clients’ online campaigns.”

Tim Brown, formerly chief product officer at Exponential, the global provider of advertising intelligence and digital media solutions that has launched the new business, has been named general manager of Abakus. Tim Brown commented: “I have never seen a technology excite agencies and advertisers quite so much as Abakus. When we reveal to them how we have taken economic game theory and applied it to marketing attribution, we immediately see that this is just the kind of elegant approach that has been missing as the marketing ecosystem seeks to evolve from last view and last-click attribution.

“Model-based attribution systems are challenging to conceive and implement but, most importantly, they demand manual inputs and assumptions about how different channels, providers and executions might work in combination with each other. Abakus is entirely agnostic of such assumptions. Our calculation engine computes the value of every campaign variable in all combinations to reveal the marginal value of any channel, partner, placement or execution.

“Abakus is arguably the first to provide an effective cross-media view by allowing for everything that an advertiser is doing – whether paid, earned or owned, on or offline – by using a baseline that can account for all the factors that might impact the success of marketing campaigns.”

For more information, visit http://www.abakus-attribution.com.

About Abakus

Abakus applies economic game theory to calculate the true marginal value of all marketing channels, campaigns and providers. Abakus is used by multiple advertisers and agencies to enable more efficient marketing campaigns. It is owned by Exponential Interactive and has offices in Emeryville, CA, and New York, NY. Discover more at www.abakus-attribution.com.

About House of Kaizen

House of Kaizen is the merger of Web Liquid Group and NetX, two award winning, veteran independent digital marketing agencies that have come together to refocus the industry on what makes digital a unique marketing arena — continuous optimization. We’ve rebuilt our business across offices in London, New York and Lagos to challenge the norms and demand more of digital media on behalf of our prestigious roster of clients.

We call it the passion to improve but our clients simply think of our work as better behavioral insights, better media investments, better consumer experiences and better digital marketing ROI. We geek out on finding improvements in everything we do, it’s what brings us to the office every day. And that’s why we’re called House of Kaizen. If you want to work with a group of people that challenges the industry to do better, then you’ll want to work with House of Kaizen. Current clients include Avis Budget Group, Superbreak, Amazon, Tiffany & Co., Rubbermaid, Total Gym, Bloomberg and Condé Nast.