Introduction
Marketing attribution has become increasingly important as brands leverage multiple channels to acquire and engage customers. However, accurately tracking how offline and online activities translate to business outcomes remains a challenge. Marketing attribution software use advanced algorithms and data science to analyze customer journeys across channels and assign credit to the appropriate touchpoints. This allows optimization of campaigns and maximizing return on ad spend. In this blog, we evaluate 15 leading attribution solutions based on key criteria to help identify the right fit.
Methods of Evaluation
The software solutions are evaluated based on various conventional criteria like features, pricing, support and enterprise capabilities. In addition, we also consider modern factors like number of backlinks, organic traffic and keyword volume trends to gauge market presence, thought leadership and demand. This helps provide a holistic perspective on the solutions’ popularity and ability to deliver value. The top players are identified based on comprehensive capabilities for cross-channel analytics, deep attribution models and insights for optimizing ROI of marketing programs.
1. AdobeAnalytics
AdobeAnalytics, formerly known as Adobe Analytics, is an enterprise-level web analytics solution developed and marketed by Adobe Inc. It provides insights into customer behaviors like website and app usage and helps companies improve marketing campaigns and digital experiences. With over 30 years in digital marketing, AdobeAnalytics leads the way in attribution, behavioral data segmentation, and AI-powered analytics.
Pros: Some key advantages of AdobeAnalytics include:
– Comprehensive analytics suite that provides insights across digital channels
– Advanced attribution modeling capabilities to accurately measure campaign effectiveness
– Artificial intelligence and machine learning powers automatic segmentation and predictive insights
– Strong suite of features for personalization, optimization, and experience optimization
– Seamless integration with Creative Cloud solutions like Adobe Experience Manager
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the cost – AdobeAnalytics is an expensive enterprise solution that may be overkill for some smaller companies or teams.
Pricing: AdobeAnalytics pricing starts at $150 per month for a Foundation tier and scales based on data volume and features. There are also Enterprise pricing options available which can cost tens of thousands per month based on needs.
Some key stats about AdobeAnalytics include:
– Used by over 83,000 companies globally including 80% of Fortune 100 companies
– Tracks behaviors and delivers insights from over 1 trillion web and mobile interactions every month
– Integrated analytics solution that works across websites, mobile apps, video, social media, and digital ad campaigns
2. Flurry Analytics
Flurry Analytics, provided by Yahoo, is an app analytics and marketing attribution solution. Flurry collects data on app usage, audience insights, and campaign performance across mobile, web, and connected TV. With over 10,000 customers globally, Flurry provides analytics and attribution for top apps and games.
Pros: Some key advantages of using Flurry Analytics include: – Independent attribution partner to measure the true impact of your marketing programs – Dashboard and customizable tools to track metrics that matter for your mobile campaigns – ROI analysis to understand user acquisition cost and lifetime value for acquisition programs
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the free version only provides basic analytics and a limited number of integrations. For advanced features like cross-device tracking you need one of the paid subscription plans.
Pricing: Flurry Analytics offers both free and paid subscription plans. The free Starter plan provides basic analytics and tracking. Paid plans starting at $99/month unlock advanced features like custom reporting, deeper analytics, and integrated marketing tools.
Some key stats and facts about Flurry Analytics include: – Tracks over 1 billion mobile devices globally – Provides insights for over 250,000 mobile apps – Collects and analyzes over 1 trillion daily events – Campaign tracking and attribution for over 500 advertiser networks
3. IBM Digital Analytics
IBM Digital Analytics, formerly known as IBM Digital Analytics, is an enterprise-grade marketing attribution and web analytics platform. As one of the leaders in the digital analytics space, IBM Digital Analytics provides insights across web, mobile and IoT touchpoints to help marketer’s optimize campaigns and better understand customer journeys.
Pros: Some key advantages of IBM Digital Analytics include:
– Large enterprise-grade platform that can scale to handle high traffic sites and apps.
– Reaches across web, mobile and IoT devices to provide a unified view of the customer journey.
– Robust personalization and AI capabilities that use machine learning to deliver 1:1 personalized experiences.
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the higher cost compared to some other attribution and analytics solutions due to its large enterprise capabilities and support.
Pricing: Pricing for IBM Digital Analytics is not publicly listed and varies based on business size, data volume and customization needs. Generally targeted towards large enterprises with dedicated sales representatives to discuss customized pricing options.
Some key stats about IBM Digital Analytics include:
– Used by over 5,000 global brands including top retailers, publishers and enterprises.
– Processes billions of events and pageviews each month across millions of digital properties.
– Integrates data from over 50 sources including web, mobile, POS, CRM and more.
4. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is an online survey tool that helps businesses and individuals capture the voice of customers through survey creation, distribution, and analysis. Founded in 1999, SurveyMonkey provides a free basic online survey platform and paid enterprise plans for advanced features and higher volume usage.
Pros: Some key advantages of SurveyMonkey include:
– Free basic plan for simple surveys and fewer responses.
– Intuitive drag-and-drop survey builder.
– Wide range of question types available.
– Real-time response data and dashboard analytics.
– Integrations with tools like Excel, SPSS, and Salesforce.
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the free version has limited functionality for advanced use cases. Paid enterprise plans may be required for large data collection volumes, customized branding, and advanced analytic capabilities.
Pricing: Pricing for SurveyMonkey starts with a free basic individual account. Paid enterprise plans range from $0 to $345+ per month depending on usage volume, complexity, and integrations needed.
Some key stats about SurveyMonkey include:
– Over 500 million surveys have been collected to date.
– More than 100 million active users.
– Available in over 20 languages.
– Used by 9 out of 10 Fortune 500 companies.
5. Typeform
Typeform is an online form and survey builder that focuses on creating beautifully designed, people-friendly experiences. Founded in 2012 and based in Barcelona, Spain, Typeform allows users to create interactive online forms without needing to code or have design expertise. With Typeform, users can build quizzes, surveys, applications and other types of forms to engage users and collect valuable responses and data.
Pros: Key advantages of using Typeform include:
– Beautifully designed, mobile-friendly templates that are easy to customize
– Higher engagement through interactive elements like progress tracking, conditional logic, and gamification
– Detailed reporting and analytics on form results and submissions over time
– Integrations with tools like Google Sheets, Airtable, and Salesforce for data export
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that Typeform plans and pricing can be more expensive compared to other basic form builders if you don’t need all the advanced features.
Pricing: Typeform offers the following paid plans starting at $16/month for the Standard plan which includes unlimited forms, 10,000 responses/month and basic support. The Premium plan is $36/month and unlocks more features like conditional logic, custom URL, and SSO/LDAP integration.
Some key stats about Typeform include:
– Used by over 70,000 companies including Dropbox, Spotify, IBM, and Intel
– Has helped companies collect over 1 billion responses globally
– Forms built with Typeform receive on average 50-70% higher response and completion rates compared to standard forms
– Provides real-time insights on form submissions and responses over time
6. Matomo
Matomo is an open source analytics platform previously known as Piwik. It provides insights about visitors to your website and how people engage with your digital properties. Unlike Google Analytics, Matomo does not share any data with third parties and respects the privacy of website visitors.
Pros: Some key advantages of Matomo include:
– Open source and self-hostable – You own your data and have control over privacy
– Rich analytics and segmentation capabilities – In-depth insights about visitors and their behavior
– Excellent support community – Active forums and documentation resources
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that it requires technical expertise to self-host and maintain the Matomo server and software updates. For sites without in-house IT support, this could require additional costs to outsource hosting and maintenance.
Pricing: Matomo offers three main pricing options:
– Free and open source self-hosted version
– Starting at $49/month for hosted cloud plans
– Custom plans for enterprise needs
Some key stats about Matomo include:
– Used by over 1 million sites worldwide
– Over 7,500 contributors to the open source code
– Supports over 50 languages and currencies
– Has a robust plugin ecosystem with over 1,000+ plugins
7. Hotjar
Hotjar is a leading website analytics and heatmaps solution that helps companies understand user behavior on their websites. Founded in 2011 and based in Malta, Hotjar’s platform provides users with the tools to see exactly where visitors click, what content they view, and how they interact with websites. With over 280,000 websites using its software, Hotjar has become one of the top website analytics solutions on the market.
Pros: Some of the main advantages of Hotjar include:
– Heatmaps and session recordings allow users to see exactly where visitors click and move their mouse on site
– Usability testing and conversion funnel analysis help optimize site design and flows
– Customer behavior insights provide a deeper understanding of how users interact with pages
Cons: A potential disadvantage is that the free plan has some limitations on data storage and plugins available. For some larger sites, an upgraded paid plan may be needed to access all features.
Pricing: Hotjar offers flexible paid plans starting at $99 per month for their Standard plan which removes data limits and unlocks more features. They also offer customized Enterprise plans for very large sites.
Some key stats about Hotjar include:
– Used by over 280,000 websites worldwide
– 30+ languages supported
– Users can collect over 1 billion pageviews per month
– Integrations available with tools like Google Analytics and Mixpanel
8. Adjust
Adjust is an industry-leading marketing attribution and analytics platform that helps mobile-focused brands maximize their marketing ROI. Founded in Berlin in 2012, Adjust securely connects apps with marketers to measure the effectiveness of each marketing channel.
Pros: Key advantages of Adjust include:
– Deep attribution capabilities that can track campaigns across all channels from install to conversion.
– Powerful cross-channel analytics to measure ROI across Facebook, Google, Instagram and other platforms.
– Ability to track user lifetime value and assign correct attribution as users engage with apps over time.
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that Adjust’s platform requires integrating their SDK and tracking code which takes additional developer resources.
Pricing: Adjust offers various pricing plans depending on usage. Basic plans start at $99/month while more advanced custom plans are available for high-volume usage. There is also a free 14 day trial available to test out Adjust’s platform and features.
Some key stats about Adjust include:
– Processes over 40 billion events per day from over 50,000 apps.
– Has attributed over $150 billion in sales to marketing campaigns.
– Handles attribution and analytics for top mobile brands like Uber, booking.com and SoundCloud.
9. Intercom
Intercom is a customer communications platform that helps companies improve conversations across marketing, sales, and support. Founded in 2011 and based in San Francisco, Intercom now serves over 25,000 paying customers including DigitalOcean, Dropbox, Github, SendGrid and more. Intercom aims to be the operating system for customer communication that provides the right support and messages across channels at the right time.
Pros: Some key advantages of Intercom include:
– Customer messaging & communication across channels like web, mobile apps, email and more
– Segmented engagement campaigns to reach customers with the right messages
– Analytics for tracking user behavior, retention and growth
– Integration with hundreds of business apps through their open API
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that Intercom is only available as a paid software-as-a-service with no free version. This may be prohibitive for some very small businesses or teams on tighter budgets.
Pricing: Intercom offers three main pricing plans – Startup ($49 per agent/month), Professional ($99 per agent/month) and Enterprise (custom pricing). Plans vary based on the number of agents, features and support included.
Some key stats about Intercom include:
– Over 1.5 billion messages are sent through Intercom every month
– Intercom has over 500 employees
– Intercom has raised over $240 million in funding
– Customers range from startups to Fortune 500 companies like IBM and Airbnb
10. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is an event data analytics platform that helps companies analyze user behavior, optimize their products, and drive user growth. Founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, Mixpanel has Analytics, User Profiles, Cohorts, Experiments, and Mobile built right into its platform.
Pros: Some key advantages of Mixpanel include:
– Powerful data visualization tools like Heatmaps, Retention, and Funnels to understand user behavior
– Custom event and people analytics to analyze user cohorts and segments
– Wide range of integrations with other tools and services for enhanced analytics
Cons: One potential disadvantage of Mixpanel is that its pricing can get expensive for very large companies or those tracking an extremely high volume of custom events and users.
Pricing: Mixpanel offers three pricing plans – Free Plan, Standard Plan starting at $499/month, and Business Plan starting at $999/month. Pricing is based on the number of monthly active users and monthly event volume.
Some key stats about Mixpanel include:
– Over 26,000 customers including Anthropic, Dashlane, and Shopify
– Raised over $183M in funding
– Integrates with over 150 platforms like GitHub, Segment, and Zendesk
– Can track over 500 events per second per project
11. Splunk
Splunk is an enterprise software platform that allows organizations to search, monitor, and analyze machine-generated data, including logs, metrics, mobile, and more, across their IT infrastructure, applications and business systems. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in San Francisco, Splunk’s software monitors the events in real time and indexes them for fast search and analysis across any data source.
Pros: Some key advantages of Splunk include:
– Strong event and log data processing capabilities that allow searching of massive amounts of machine data in real time.
– Robust analytics engine that allows analysis of data from many different sources under one platform.
– Enterprise scalability and security features to handle petabytes of data from thousands of sources.
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the high cost of Splunk licenses for very large deployments handling petabytes of machine data daily.
Pricing: Splunk pricing depends on the edition and usage. The main editions are Splunk Enterprise (on-premise), Splunk Cloud (cloud deployment) and Splunk Light (freemium edition for smaller deployments). Pricing starts at around $50 per GB of indexed data per day for on-premise Splunk Enterprise.
Some key stats about Splunk include:
– Used by more than 85% of Fortune 100 companies
– Monitors over 1 trillion events per day for customers
– Over 15,000 customers globally across industries
12. AppsFlyer
AppsFlyer is a leading mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform. Founded in 2011, AppsFlyer helps brands make good data-driven decisions to scale their mobile growth. With over 10,000 customers worldwide, AppsFlyer has become the platform of choice for mobile-first companies.
Pros: Some of the key advantages of AppsFlyer include:
– Leading mobile attribution platform with advanced attribution capabilities
– Automatically detects and analyzes over 200 different attribution types and models
– Integrates seamlessly with other important marketing tools like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads and more
Cons: The main disadvantage is that AppsFlyer is a paid solution with pricing based on number of SDK integrations and data volume processed each month
Pricing: AppsFlyer offers various pricing plans starting from a free Starter plan for up to 1 million events per month. For larger volumes, pricing scales from $99 per month for the Growth plan (up to 10 million events) all the way up to an Enterprise plan with custom pricing for very high data volumes.
Some key stats about AppsFlyer include:
– Processes over 15 billion installs per month
– Integrates with over 200 partners including Google, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat
– Has over 10,000 customers worldwide spanning all major industries
13. VWO
VWO is an A/B testing and marketing attribution tool that helps companies optimize the user experience and measure the impact of all marketing channels. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, VWO combines experimentation, personalization, and analytics capabilities into a single platform.
Pros: Some key advantages of using VWO include:
– Feature flags and A/B testing capabilities to quickly rollout and test changes
– Personalization and multi-variate testing to tailor experiences for individual users
– Live dashboard and customizable reports for easy tracking of campaign performance and business results
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the full capabilities of VWO may be overkill for some smaller businesses or startups on tighter budgets. The pricing could be considered expensive compared to simpler, less robust A/B testing tools.
Pricing: VWO offers various pricing plans starting from a free Basic plan for up to 2 experiments and 5,000 visitors per month. For most businesses, the Standard plan starting at $99/month is recommended, unlocking 10 experiments and 50,000 visitors. Enterprise pricing is available for larger companies with custom quotes.
Some key stats about VWO include:
– Used by over 25,000 brands worldwide including Microsoft, Uber, Twitter, and Citibank
– 60% reduction in time to insight according to customer case studies
– 100+ integrations with other marketing tools like Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn and more
14. Segment
Segment is a customer data platform (CDP) that helps companies collect, clean, and activate customer data across all digital channels. Founded in 2011 and based in San Francisco, Segment has raised over $295M to date and processes billions of events each month for thousands of customers worldwide like Intuit, Anthropic and Atlassian.
Pros: Some key advantages of using Segment include:
– Simplifies data collection and integration from websites, mobile apps and other digital tools
– Centralizes customer profiles and data for analytics, marketing and personalization
– Wide API support allows activation of data in lots of popular tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel and MongoDB
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that Segment’s paid plans can be more expensive than some other CDP alternatives for high-volume data users.
Pricing: Segment offers both free and paid plans. The free Starter plan has no data or event limits. Paid plans start at $999/month for the individual contributor plan and scale up based on data volume and number of users.
Some key stats about Segment include:
– Processes over 30 billion events per month
– Integrates with hundreds of tools via API
– Ranked as the #1 CDP by IDC for four years running (2019-2022)
– Supports over 1600 integrations including Google Analytics, Facebook and Amazon S3
15. Amplitude
Amplitude is a product analytics platform that helps companies analyze user behavior within their digital products. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, Amplitude’s platform provides analytics, experimentation, and insights tools to help businesses improve their digital products and build better user experiences.
Pros: Some key advantages of Amplitude include:
– Strong mobile and web analytics capabilities to track user behaviors across platforms and devices
– Real-time analytics and insights that provide up-to-date visibility into user engagement and retention
– User behavior segmentation and funnel analysis tools to understand drop-offs and optimize the user journey
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the platform can be more expensive than other options for larger teams or companies with high data volumes.
Pricing: Amplitude offers free and paid plans. The free plan allows up to 10 million events per month. Starting from $249/month, paid plans scale up based on data volume and team size with volumes up to 10 billion events per month.
Some key stats about Amplitude include:
– Over 2,500 customers including Twenty, Atlassian, NBC News, and Canva
– Processes over 1 trillion events per month
– Integrates with over 200 marketing, analytics and CRM tools like Google Analytics, Marketo, and Salesforce
– Supports mobile and web analytics across iOS, Android, and JavaScript
Conclusion
Accurate attribution continues to grow in importance for measuring true marketing impact. The solutions evaluated offer robust features for analyzing customer journeys across touchpoints from awareness to purchase. Combining latest technologies like AI with rich data sets, they provide actionable insights for optimizing campaigns, improving ROI and informing strategic decisions. The top solutions highlighted deliver comprehensive cross-channel analytics alongside strong attribution modeling to help optimize every marketing dollar spent and maximize returns.