Holistic attribution, defined as the ability to understand how marketing and nonmarketing touchpoints influenced a specific business outcome, is a must for measuring marketing’s true impact in today’s extremely competitive and fragmented media world. But with less than 10% of companies capable of attributing holistically, it’s early days.

Why are so few companies doing holistic attribution?

Lack of companywide buy-in, lack of a true business goal, difficulties in accessing the right data, and problems with technology integration are just some of the obstacles that keep marketers and their organizations from attributing in a more holistic way.

How can marketers advance their attribution efforts?

There are guideposts companies can use to identify what’s needed to move to a more holistic practice. These focus on the state of their culture, data, technology and their desire for better measurement.

How are companies balancing both channel-specific and company-level key performance indicator (KPI) types?

Companies best equipped to navigate both sets of metrics have commonalities: They have built models that account for both types of KPIs, they believe the models (with a healthy dose of skepticism), and they understand the insights generated by those models—regardless of their level within their organization.