Attribution

Also known as: conversion attribution

Attribution is a method for linking a specific advertisement to a conversion or acquisition — essentially answering the question: which ad (or sequence of ads) deserves credit for a desired user action?

The most common attribution model is last view/last click, which assigns full credit to the final ad a user saw or clicked before converting. As AdTech has evolved, however, more sophisticated approaches have emerged to reflect the reality that a user's path to conversion typically involves multiple touchpoints. These include multi-touch attribution models (which distribute credit across several interactions), cross-device attribution (which tracks user behaviour across phones, tablets, and desktops), online-offline attribution (which connects digital ad exposure to in-store or offline actions), and game theory attribution (which uses cooperative game theory to assign credit more mathematically).

No single model is universally correct; the appropriate choice depends on campaign goals, available data, and the complexity of the customer journey being measured.