Strategy & Tracking
Marketing Attribution
The practice of assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that influenced it, so you know which channels and campaigns actually drove results.
Definition
Marketing attribution is how you decide which ads, channels, and clicks get credit when a customer converts. Because most people touch several channels before they buy, attribution gives you a defensible way to connect spend to revenue instead of guessing.
In depth
A customer rarely sees one ad and buys. They might find you through a Google search, leave, see a retargeting ad on Instagram, come back through a branded search a week later, and finally call. Attribution is the set of rules you use to split the credit for that sale across those touchpoints. The model you pick changes which channel looks like the hero, which is why two people staring at the same data can reach opposite conclusions.
In practice, attribution decides where your next dollar goes. If your model gives all the credit to the last click, you'll over-invest in bottom-of-funnel channels and starve the awareness work that fed them. If it spreads credit too thin, you'll keep paying for touchpoints that aren't pulling their weight. Common models include last-click, first-click, linear, time-decay, and data-driven, and each tells a different story.
We treat attribution as a decision tool, not a courtroom verdict. No model is perfectly accurate, so the goal is consistency and directional truth: pick a model, apply it everywhere, and use it to spot channels that are clearly over- or under-credited. When the stakes are high, we lean on incrementality testing to check whether a channel is actually causing sales or just taking credit for them.
Worked example
A homeowner clicks a Google ad for kitchen remodeling, then a Facebook retargeting ad, then requests an estimate on a branded search. Last-click gives 100% credit to branded search; linear gives each of the three touchpoints a third.
Strategy & Tracking
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Clean tracking and honest attribution, so you know which dollars actually produce revenue.