Media attribution is about crediting paid media, including print, radio, outdoor, sponsorships and podcasts as well as online ads, with the enquiries and revenue they produce. The hard part is the offline half, which leaves no click to follow. This article answers how to give every media buy its own trackable route into the levelpartner.ai platform, so that a newspaper insert and a paid social campaign can be compared on the same report. Done well, it ends the yearly argument about whether the sponsorship was worth it.
Why bought media is hard to attribute
Online ads hand you a tracking link. A billboard does not. Someone sees your name on a bus shelter, remembers it a week later, searches for you and fills in a form. On a basic report, that client shows up as organic search, and the outdoor campaign gets nothing.
Firms that sell locally feel this most. Real estate agencies run property supplements, mortgage brokers sponsor local sports clubs, consultancies pay for trade-press features. Each of those buys is usually renewed or cancelled on instinct, because nothing connects it to a signed client.
The three routes that work
There is no way to track a person who saw a poster and told nobody. There are three ways to make most of them visible.
A unique phone number per media buy. Calls are the most common response to offline media, and a tracking number from the platform records each call against its campaign. A short web address per buy, such as yourfirm.com/radio, that redirects to a landing page with tracking parameters attached. And a required source question on forms and booking pages, with each current media buy listed by name.
Together these will usually catch the majority of media-driven enquiries. None of them is perfect alone.
Before you start
- A list of every paid media placement running this year, with its cost and dates.
- Sites pages you can create for each placement's short address.
- Tracking numbers available on the platform for each placement that carries a phone number.
- A form or booking page used for most enquiries, where you can add the source question.
How to set it up
- Give each media placement a short, memorable name.
- Create a landing page in Sites for each placement that runs for more than a month.
- Set up a short path on your domain that redirects to that page with tags attached.
- Assign a dedicated tracking number to every placement that prints or reads out a phone number.
- Add a "where did you hear about us" dropdown listing current placements to your main forms.
- Ask reception to record the source on contacts created from walk-ins and untracked calls.
- Record each placement's cost and date range in a shared sheet.
- Review won value by source in the Lead Source Report once each placement ends.
What it is for when growth has stalled
Bought media is often the largest discretionary line in a mid-sized firm's marketing budget, and the least questioned. A sponsorship that has run for six years has its own momentum. Media attribution gives you a fair test: give it a route, measure it for a full term, and compare its revenue with what the same money produces elsewhere.
Suppose an agency pays an illustrative £2,400 a quarter for a weekly half page in a local property supplement, and adds a tracking number and the address yourfirm.co.uk/homes to every ad. Say the quarter brings 41 calls on that number, plus 28 visits and 9 valuation requests through the address, and four instructions follow worth £22,000 in fees. On those numbers the supplement would earn its renewal, and the agency would have a figure to negotiate the rate with.
Time it takes each week
Setting up a new placement takes about 30 minutes: a page, a short address, a number and a dropdown entry. Weekly effort is close to nil. The real work is the end-of-term review for each placement, about 20 minutes each, done before the renewal date rather than after. If you want this on screen, add a media widget to your marketing attribution dashboard.
The mistake most people make
Reusing the main office number in media. Every call then looks like it came from nowhere in particular, and the placement's results vanish into general enquiries. A separate tracking number costs very little in usage and is the single most useful thing you can do for offline media.
When not to bother
Brand placements that are not meant to produce enquiries, such as a sponsorship you keep for community reasons, do not need attribution. Decide that openly and stop measuring them. Equally, if a placement runs for less than a month in a small publication, the volume will be too low to read. Group short placements into one source, such as "local print", and judge them together.
Troubleshooting
The short address gets visits but no source. The redirect is dropping its parameters. Test it in a private browser window and check that the landing URL carries the tags.
Calls on a tracking number are not linked to a contact. The caller did not leave details. Have the call answered with a short script that captures name and email, or send a follow-up text from Conversations.
The source dropdown is answered randomly. Too many options or vague labels. Keep it to eight named choices plus "other", and retire placements that have ended.
Media and digital report on different dates. Media often produces enquiries weeks after it runs. Review each placement over its run plus a month.
Frequently asked questions
How is media attribution different from digital attribution?
Digital attribution follows clicks that already carry tags. Media attribution has to create a trackable route for channels that have none. The reporting is the same; the capture is different. Digital marketing attribution covers the online side.
Can we measure brand effects, not just direct response?
Not precisely. A rough signal is the volume of branded searches and direct visits during and after a campaign compared with the same period without it. Treat it as indicative only.
Should every media buy have its own landing page?
Every buy that runs for more than a month, yes. Shorter or smaller placements can share a page with a dropdown that asks which one they saw.
How do we compare a sponsorship with a paid search campaign?
Put both on the same report, measured on won revenue over a full sales cycle. The multi channel attribution article explains how to keep online and offline sources in one consistent list.