Since time immemorial, digital marketing has credited an online conversion to the last click a user made before the purchase was made.

But that doesn’t just ignore the plethora of exposures a consumer may have had to a marketing message prior to the last click; it also arguably fails to utilize the growing number of ways in which prior clicks and exposures can actually be measured today.

That is something Matthew Krepsik wants to fix.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, the global head of analytics for measurement agency Nielsen describes how the company has already been offering products like Total Ad Ratings, used by Unilever and now Facebook to offer a view of unduplicated consumers across screens.

But, when it comes to attribution, Krepsik wants to go further.

“Last-click was a good surrogate metric,” he says. “And now we’re seeing we’ve got to move beyond last-click, because it tends to skew towards where everyone’s last in line.

“We need to think holistically across that entire customer journey. Whether it was the linear ad I saw two weeks ago that drove awareness for me, or it was the display ad, or the recommendation in the email I had from a friend who gave me some interest, then I finally went online and searched for that product, or searched for that category where I was deeply interested in a new car, or a new insurance program or a new savings account.”

Nielsen’s efforts to date have been part-built on top of eXelate, the ad data platform it acquired in 2015 for an estimated $200 million.

Facebook announced recently it would use Total Ad Ratings to sell and trade on its video content.

But, for Krepsik, he wants to step back on attribution.

He says: “I’m coming back to look at that overall entire customer journey, and give transparency to the role that each of those different media assets played, each of those channels played, and all our creatives played, driving that customer all the way to conversion.

“So, really coming in, taking a step back, driving that holistic view and saying, can we really start to nurture customers across that entire path to purchase, and not just narrowly focus on the bits and pieces of that journey.”

This video was produced in New York City at Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World, a Beet.TV Leadership Forum, presented by 4INFO and hosted by Viacom. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on @robertandrews