The History and Future of Marketing Attribution

February 15, 2023

Today, sales are made or lost with a click, so it stands to reason that attribution models need to accommodate the nuances of the digital world.

Marketing Attribution in the Offline World

Back in the 1950s is where the roots of marketing mix models (MMMs) can be found. This approach gained popularity into the 80s, as it included cross-channel coverage of all media types that were used to encourage conversions.

MMMs are much too slow for the online world, often providing results weeks after a campaign has been completed, rather than during one. They also do a poor job of measuring brand equity, often leading to over-spending on activities in the lower end of the funnel and under-spending when it comes to brand development for those that need more motivation to take action. These and other shortcomings make the MMM model ineffective, especially for organizations that have yet to make kickstart digital transformation.

Single Source Attribution

Single source marketing attribution assigns the credit for conversions to one touchpoint, which is typically the first or the last touch. With first touch attribution, all of the credit goes to the very first channel your lead engaged with, whether it was PPC ad, a click on an Instagram carousel or a CTA button in an email.

This type of attribution is easy to implement, but it fails to account for any interactions the customer may have with your company after that initial first contact, which will obviously change the perceived value of any other channel. Last touch attribution gives credit to the final touchpoint before the sale, and while it is also easy to track, it has the same issues as first touch attribution, as it doesn’t recognize any other channels that may have contributed.

Multi-Source Attribution

With multi-source or multi-touch attribution, each channel that contributes to the final sale is given its due credit. This method gives a much more complete view of the sales process, but it still doesn’t account for how much each channel actually contributed to the final sale. An example of multi-source attribution would be an initial PPC ad that leads to a landing page, then an email form in exchange for a free ebook, a webinar, and then the final sale.

Linear: This is the most basic model, giving equal credit to every touchpoint in the campaign.
Time Decay: This model is often used for longer sales cycles and gives the bulk of the credit to touchpoints that occurred later in the process. It generally will discount activities that took place earlier, which likely had less impact on the final result.
U-shaped: This type of multi-source attribution will give credit to two particular touchpoints; the first touch and then the lead creation.Typically, you would give 40% of the credit to the first touch, 40% to lead creation, and divide the last 20% among the touchpoints that happened in between.
W-shaped: This model resembles the U-shaped model but includes an extra touchpoint, which is the opportunity creation. In the W-shaped model, each touch gets 30% of the credit, while the other touches share the remaining 10%.
W-shaped: This model resembles the U-shaped model but includes an extra touchpoint, which is the opportunity creation. In the W-shaped model, each touch gets 30% of the credit, while the other touches share the remaining 10%.