For years, digital marketers have relied on attribution reports to measure campaign performance. While these reports can tell you which interaction happened immediately before a conversion, they rarely explain how a customer got there. In reality, conversions rarely happen after a single ad exposure. Understanding these conversion paths is essential for optimizing campaigns and allocating budget more effectively. A prospective customer might first discover your brand through Connected TV (CTV), later engage with a display campaign, click on a retargeting ad days later, and finally convert after seeing another message.
Google’s research on the “messy middle” highlights that consumers typically move through multiple interactions before making a purchase decision.
Looking beyond last-touch attribution
Traditional reporting often focuses on the final touchpoint before a conversion. While useful, this approach overlooks the many interactions that influenced a customer’s decision along the way.
Paths to Conversion maps the conversion paths users take before converting, helping marketers visualize how campaigns, tactics, and ad types work together throughout the customer journey.
Using illumin’s identity graph, the report connects these touchpoints into an easy-to-understand visual experience, making conversion paths much easier to interpret.
See how campaigns work together
One of the biggest challenges in modern advertising is understanding how different media channels complement one another.
Instead of evaluating campaigns in isolation, Paths to Conversion shows how users move between campaigns, tactics, or ad types before completing a desired action. This has become increasingly important as consumers interact with brands across multiple touchpoints throughout the buying process. Deloitte’s Digital Consumer Trends research shows that people regularly switch between devices and channels before making purchase decisions, making it difficult to understand campaign performance by looking at a single touchpoint in isolation.
For example, marketers can identify conversion paths where:
- A CTV impression builds awareness
- Display advertising reinforces the message
- Retargeting ultimately drives the conversion
Rather than treating each interaction independently, the report shows how these touchpoints work together to influence the final conversion, giving marketers a clearer understanding of which conversion paths are driving results.
How Paths to Conversion works
Available within the illumin Canvas experience, Paths to Conversion automatically maps multi-touch conversion paths for eligible campaigns. Rather than requiring manual setup or custom attribution modeling, the report is generated automatically generated when:
- A campaign has two or more tactics
- There is an assigned conversion action
- Conversions are being recorded
Once these conditions are met, the report begins collecting data and updates daily.
Identify your highest-performing conversion paths
Not every customer journey looks the same. Paths to Conversion highlights the sequences that generate the most conversions by ranking journeys according to their overall conversion volume. Customer journeys vary in both length and complexity. Some users convert after only a few exposures, while others require multiple interactions over several days before taking action.
By understanding the typical number of touchpoints required for conversion, marketers can make more informed decisions about:
- Frequency caps
- Campaign sequencing
- Budget allocation
- Upper- and lower-funnel investment
Rather than relying on assumptions, optimization decisions can be based on observed customer behavior. Research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) also emphasizes the importance of measuring the cumulative impact of advertising across channels rather than relying on a single interaction.
Making customer journeys easier to understand
Many demand-side platforms provide multi-touch attribution reports, but they often require significant analysis before marketers can extract meaningful insights.
Paths to Conversion takes a more visual approach.Instead of sorting through complex tables or spreadsheets, marketers can quickly see how campaigns connect, which sequences are driving conversions, and where optimization opportunities exist.
By transforming customer journeys into a clear visual narrative, marketers can spend less time interpreting data and more time making smarter decisions about campaign strategy.
About illumin
illumin is a strategic advertising platform focused on improving how programmatic campaigns are planned, executed, and managed. By reducing fragmentation across workflows, illumin supports in-market decision-making across the open web. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, illumin serves brands and agencies across North America, Latin America, and Europe. For more information visit www.illumin.com.
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