Attribution

Attribution is the assignment of credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that preceded it, following an explicit rule about which touch counts.

Every attribution figure is the output of three choices, and without knowing all three the number cannot be read: the model, which decides which touch receives credit and in what share; the lookback window, which decides how far before the conversion a touch still counts; and the identity scope, which decides whether touches are stitched by browser cookie or by an account across devices. The term is not used consistently across the industry: web analytics tools usually default to the last non-direct click inside a fixed window, while each ad platform reports conversions against its own window and its own view-through rule, so several platforms claim the same purchase at once. The largest misreading is treating attributed conversions as caused conversions. Attribution divides observed credit and says nothing about whether the conversion would still have happened without that channel, a question only a holdout or geo experiment can answer.