Attribution

Attribution is the practice of assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that influenced it. A customer might first discover you through a blog post, return via a search ad, sign up from an email, and finally purchase after a remarketing ad. Attribution models decide how much value each step receives. Last-click gives all credit to the final interaction; first-click gives it to the first. Linear spreads credit evenly, time-decay favors recent steps, and position-based emphasizes first and last. Data-driven models use algorithms to learn patterns from your own data.
No model is perfect. Different platforms report conversions differently and may double-count if you compare dashboards one to one. Tracking also faces limitations from privacy settings, cookie restrictions, and app-to-web handoffs. Clear definitions and consistent conversion events help reduce confusion. Choose an attribution window that matches your buying cycle and monitor assisted conversions to see the fuller picture.
Attribution is most useful when it informs decisions. If upper-funnel content rarely gets last-click credit but appears in many assisted paths, cutting it may hurt overall sales. If a channel wins under every model, it likely deserves more budget. As your program matures, combine platform attribution with aggregate methods like marketing mix modeling to validate trends. The goal is not a perfect truth but a practical view that guides smarter investment across the funnel.

If you want, I can keep expanding the letter A next with additional entries such as Acquisition, Ad Rank, Ad Schedule, Ad Spend, Ad Frequency, Affiliate Marketing, AMP, API, Audience, Audience Segmentation, Automation, Average Order Value (AOV), Awareness, and Auction—each in the same format.