From ad to sale: attribution
Which ad “caused” a purchase? Last-click, multi-touch and incrementality give very different answers.
From ad to sale: attribution
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Three ads, one person
A shopper sees a video ad, then a social ad, then clicks a search ad and buys.
- Three ads, one person: A shopper sees a video ad, then a social ad, then clicks a search ad and buys.
- The sale: They place an $80 order. Now every ad platform wants the credit.
- Last-click says: search did it: Last-click attribution gives 100% of the credit to the final click. Simple, but it ignores everything that built the desire to buy.
- Multi-touch spreads the credit: Multi-touch attribution shares credit across the video, social and search ads using rules or models. Fairer, but it needs to track people across sites, which privacy changes have made harder.
- Incrementality asks the real question: Would they have bought anyway? A holdout group that sees no ads shows the baseline. The difference is the incremental effect, the sales the ads actually caused.
- Why fraud loves attribution: If credit goes to whoever touched the sale last, fraudsters can fake that touch. Click injection and cookie stuffing steal credit for sales that would have happened anyway.
Step by step
- Three ads, one personA shopper sees a video ad, then a social ad, then clicks a search ad and buys.
- The saleThey place an $80 order. Now every ad platform wants the credit.
- Last-click says: search did itLast-click attribution gives 100% of the credit to the final click. Simple, but it ignores everything that built the desire to buy.
- Multi-touch spreads the creditMulti-touch attribution shares credit across the video, social and search ads using rules or models. Fairer, but it needs to track people across sites, which privacy changes have made harder.
- Incrementality asks the real questionWould they have bought anyway? A holdout group that sees no ads shows the baseline. The difference is the incremental effect, the sales the ads actually caused.
- Why fraud loves attributionIf credit goes to whoever touched the sale last, fraudsters can fake that touch. Click injection and cookie stuffing steal credit for sales that would have happened anyway.