Attribution
Assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that contributed.
Attribution is the practice of assigning credit for a conversion (sale, lead, signup) to the marketing touchpoints that contributed. Common models include last-click, first-click, linear, time-decay, position-based, and data-driven.
Context
Every attribution model has blind spots. Last-click over-credits the bottom-of-funnel channel (often paid search or email) and under-credits top-of-funnel (social, content). First-click does the opposite. Data-driven attribution (DDA) in GA4 and similar tools is better but still limited by visibility gaps (cross-device, ad blockers, iOS tracking restrictions).
Platform-reported attribution is almost always inflated. Meta and Google both take credit for the same conversion routinely. True incremental attribution requires incrementality testing, media mix modeling, or post-purchase survey triangulation.
A buyer who sees a LinkedIn ad, reads two blog posts over four weeks, and finally converts via a branded Google search will be credited entirely to Google under last-click attribution — even though the LinkedIn ad and blog content did most of the real persuasion.
No attribution model is 'true.' The practical approach is triangulation: platform attribution + blended MER + incrementality tests + post-purchase survey. Each view corrects biases the others have.
Related terms
Incrementality
Measuring how many conversions were actually caused by an ad vs would have happened anyway.
MMM (Media Mix Modeling)
Statistical modeling of marketing impact across channels using historical data.
GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
The current version of Google Analytics — event-based, privacy-aware, BigQuery-native.