As part of its pioneering analytics-as-a-service model, Alight Analytics is launching new turnkey media mix and attribution capabilities, giving marketing teams the power to quickly plan optimal channel mix and spend. Insights that once required the expertise of a data scientist are now available to any marketer.
Businesses are looking forward to better conditions in 2021 — digital ad spend is forecast to grow by 16.4 percent, according to eMarketer — and these new capabilities will give marketers the ability to maximize campaign ROI and attribute business growth to marketing spend.
“We want to give marketers everything they need to meet the challenges of 2020 and help them thrive in 2021,” said Matt Hertig, Alight’s CEO and co-founder. “These new capabilities are going to empower our clients to make significant contributions to their organization’s bottom line — and prove that marketing produced those results.”
Alight’s media mix capability uses statistical modeling and machine learning to generate the optimal channel mix and spend level based on the marketer’s budget and business objectives. The model is informed by historical performance data across the marketer’s online and offline channels, which is automatically collected, integrated and stored within Alight’s ChannelMix platform. Marketers can interact directly with the model from their Tableau reporting environment using a turnkey dashboard built by Alight’s team.
The new attribution capability shows how marketing investment influences marketing objectives like conversions, leads and sales by combining media data with Google Analytics conversion path data to deliver three types of attribution reporting — first click, last click and linear.
These capabilities come as part of Alight’s suite of holistic analytics solutions that are designed to help marketers achieve increasingly greater levels of insight through a four-step process called the Marketing Analytics Maturity CurveTM. The Curve provides milestones and step-by-step guidance for improving a company’s marketing analytics. Attribution modeling is a Level 3 capability, which focuses on execution, while media mix modeling is part of Level 4’s predictive focus.
Alight’s 2021 plan will continue to expand on these media measurement capabilities. A data-driven attribution model that can automatically generate custom results with ChannelMix’s modeling engine will debut in the first quarter. And new media planning and forecasting capabilities will make it easier for marketers to align marketing spend to business goals.
“These new capabilities will help marketers create maximum impact with every dollar they spend on marketing,” said Michelle Jacobs, Alight’s president and co-founder. “In a time when budgets are still under heavy scrutiny, we’re here to show that marketing is one of the most vital investments that an organization can make.”
Alight announced the new capabilities during its ChannelMix User Group (ChUG), an annual conference for clients, Nov. 9-13. This year’s event was conducted virtually through a weeklong series of webinars featuring product news, client success stories, expert advice and a 2021 economic forecast.
In addition to its upcoming capabilities, Alight Analytics is giving its agency clients unlimited access to its full library of Tableau marketing dashboards for cross-channel media, paid social and other visualizations, so they can more easily showcase their capabilities to clients and prospects.
As a special offer for its brand clients, Alight is giving them access to any of its analytics solutions free for 30 days.
“This has been a tough year, but marketers are going to lead the economic comeback,” Hertig said. “Alight is going to do everything we can to assist them.”
ABOUT ALIGHT ANALYTICS
Alight Analytics is dedicated to helping marketers build trust in the value of marketing with a suite of next-generation analytics solutions that connect marketing investments to business outcomes.
Alight has pioneered the Marketing Analytics-as-a-Service model, which combines an end-to-end analytics platform with analytics expertise, enabling you to generate scalable, sustainable marketing performance insights. With Alight’s help, marketers can achieve greater visibility into campaign performance, align marketing and sales efforts, execute campaigns more effectively, and predict how resources should be used to maximize ROI.