Attribution
Attribution is the practice of assigning credit for a conversion to the ad touchpoints that contributed to it, so advertisers can judge which media drove results.
Key takeaways
- Attribution assigns credit for conversions to contributing ad exposures.
- Last-touch is simple but overcredits the final click; multi-touch spreads credit.
- Multi-touch attribution weakened sharply with cross-site signal loss.
- Attribution measures correlation; incrementality measures true causal lift.
Attribution models
Last-touch attribution gives all credit to the final touchpoint before conversion "” simple but biased toward closing channels. Multi-touch attribution (MTA) distributes credit across the journey using rules or algorithms, aiming for a fairer picture of each channel's contribution.
The limits of MTA
MTA depends on tracking a user across many touchpoints, which cross-site signal loss badly disrupted. As a result, many advertisers now supplement or replace deterministic MTA with incrementality testing and marketing-mix modeling, which don't require user-level cross-site tracking.
| Purpose | Credit conversions to media |
|---|---|
| Last-touch | All credit to final touchpoint |
| Multi-touch | Credit spread across journey |
| Complements | Incrementality, MMM |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between last-touch and multi-touch attribution?
Last-touch credits only the final touchpoint before conversion; multi-touch distributes credit across all contributing touchpoints for a fairer view of each channel's role.
What is the difference between attribution and incrementality?
Attribution assigns credit to touchpoints that were present before a conversion (correlation); incrementality uses controlled tests to measure whether the ad actually caused conversions that wouldn't have happened otherwise (causation).