In brief: Attribution is the process of assigning a conversion or its value to marketing contacts that occurred on the recorded customer journey.
How I use attribution in practice
I use attribution as a map of what measurement has seen. I check the traffic source, campaign tagging, identity across devices and offline handover. Then I compare different attribution views with commercial reality. For larger budget changes, I look for incremental effect through an experiment, geographic comparison or a control group.
What to watch out for
An attribution report is not a record of the whole customer journey. Consent, cookies, devices, phone calls and personal recommendations create gaps. Moreover, assigned credit does not mean the channel caused the result.
Questions for decision-making
- Which part of the journey does measurement not see?
- Is campaign tagging consistent?
- Do we need to distribute credit or verify causality?
- How would the decision change under a different model?