Marketing Attribution: A Practical Guide
Marketing attribution is the process of assigning conversion credit to the marketing interactions that contributed to an outcome.
Why attribution exists
Customer journeys can include ads, search, email, referrals, direct visits, and repeated sessions. Attribution creates a rule for deciding which of those interactions gets credit.
Attribution is a model, not reality
No model perfectly represents human influence. It is a structured way to answer a decision question with incomplete behavioral data.
Common models
First-click, last-click, linear, position-based, time-decay, and data-driven approaches distribute credit differently.
Choose based on the question
A model useful for evaluating acquisition may not be the same model you use for short-term bidding or lifecycle analysis.
Data quality comes first
Sophisticated attribution cannot repair missing or wrongly defined conversion events. Establish reliable event collection before debating models.