A benefit of search ads that a lot of advertisers don't think about is the influence they have on actual searches.  Did you get that?  Ok… let me explain it this way.  If a user sees an advertisement, it can influence them to reword, expand, or refocus their search.  If, for example, I did a search for "fuzzy animals" and saw an advertisement for a "Hamster Zoo", I might decide that hamsters are the fuzzy animals I'm looking for.  And while I don't immediately click on the hamster zoo advertisement, it does influence my next search for "hamsters".

Although they're aware of the phenomenon, there are few tools available to advertisers to track this information.  Starcom IP, a "digital agency", is developing a system it calls Multiple Attribution Protocol, or MAP, for tracking the influence of any number of advertisements on a customer's final purchasing decision.  Using information from past advertising initiatives, MAP assigns values to advertisements and then tracks those advertisements to provide advertisers a way to see a wider variety of what drives customers to their sites.  According to the company, MAP is not designed to replace existing analytics services.  The goal of MAP is to work above those services to bridge them all together.

It sounds like an interesting system.  I'm a little iffy on the accuracy, but I'd have to get my hands on it to tell for sure.  It's still in the testing stage so we'll just have to wait and see what becomes of it.