Attribution: who gets credit for the sale across many touchpoints

A customer rarely buys on a single touch: they saw a creator's video, ran into seeding a week later, then googled, clicked an ad and bought. Which channel "made" the sale? That's the attribution question — and your answer decides where you reallocate budget.

The problem

If you credit the sale to one touch only, the rest look "useless" and get cut — even though without them there'd be no sale. Wrong attribution leads to wrong decisions.

The main models

• Last click — all credit to the final touch. Simple, but undervalues the top of the funnel (reach, creators) that created the demand.
• First click — credit to the first touch. Overvalues discovery, ignores what closed the deal.
• Linear — credit split evenly across all touches.
• Time decay — more weight to touches closer to purchase.
• Position-based (U-shaped) — more weight to the first and last touch.

The last-click trap

The most common mistake is judging reach channels (seeding, creators) by last-click. They're rarely the "last touch," yet they're exactly what builds awareness and demand. Under last-click they get undervalued and cut — and then everything gets cheaper... except sales.

What to do in practice

• Don't reduce evaluation to one model — look at the whole customer journey.
• Judge reach channels by the rise in branded searches and the overall lift in sales, not just direct clicks.
• Use promo codes/UTM and "how did you hear about us" surveys as extra signals.

Takeaway

Attribution is about not cutting the channels that create demand just because they aren't the "last click." Look at the whole customer journey. We help build campaign evaluation where the contribution of both reach and performance is visible.