In modern marketing, customers rarely convert after a single interaction. They might discover your brand through a blog post, click a retargeting ad, receive an email, and later search for your brand before finally purchasing. Attribution models help marketers assign credit across these touchpoints.
Attribution modeling is the framework used to determine how marketing credit is distributed across different interactions that lead to a desired outcome (e.g., a purchase or sign-up).
Example: A customer sees a YouTube ad (awareness), clicks a Google search ad (consideration), and then converts after a remarketing email. A time-decay model would give the most credit to the email, some to the search ad, and less to the YouTube ad, reflecting how each step contributed.
Different models assign credit differently:
- First-touch gives 100% credit to the first interaction.
- Last-touch gives credit to the final step before conversion.
- Linear spreads credit evenly across all touchpoints.
- Time-decay gives more weight to interactions closer to conversion.
Attribution modeling is crucial for budget allocation, campaign optimization, and understanding the true ROI of multi-channel marketing.