What is marketing attribution?
Marketing attribution is the process of assigning credit for a conversion to the ads, emails, searches, and other touchpoints that came before it. The rules you use to split that credit are called an attribution model.
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Why attribution matters
Customers rarely convert after a single interaction. They may see a social ad, search your brand, open an email, and then buy. Attribution tells you which of those steps to credit, which shapes where you put your budget.
Common attribution models
Rule-based models follow a fixed formula. Last-click gives all credit to the final touch, first-click gives it to the first, and time-decay gives more to touches nearer the conversion.
Data-driven models use your own conversion paths to estimate each touchpoint's contribution. Multi-touch attribution and marketing mix modeling are broader approaches that look at many touchpoints or at aggregate spend.
What attribution can't tell you
Attribution describes how credit is divided among conversions that happened. It doesn't prove an ad caused a sale, because the customer may have bought anyway. Incrementality tests are the way to measure cause.
Common questions
What is an attribution model?
An attribution model is a set of rules or a statistical method that decides how much credit each touchpoint receives for a conversion. Different models can give very different views of the same results.
What is the difference between attribution and incrementality?
Attribution divides credit among touchpoints for conversions that occurred. Incrementality measures how many conversions happened only because of the marketing, using a comparison with a group that didn't see it.
Which attribution model is best?
It depends on your sales cycle, channels, and the data you can collect. Many teams compare several models and confirm important decisions with experiments.
Why do platforms report different conversion numbers?
Each platform uses its own attribution rules, windows, and data. Two platforms can both claim credit for the same sale, so their totals often exceed your actual conversions.
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