Few topics generate more frustration in the boardroom than attribution. Platforms each claim the same sale, the analytics tool tells a different story, and finance trusts none of them.
The usual response is to buy a better model. In our experience, the better investment is a better question.
Attribution answers “how”, not “whether”
Click-based attribution is good at describing the paths customers took. It is poor at telling you whether a channel caused revenue that would not otherwise have happened. Those are different questions, and they need different tools:
- Path analysis and attribution — how do customers move between touchpoints?
- Incrementality testing — what happens to revenue when we switch a channel off, or double it?
- Marketing mix modelling — across the whole business, over time, what is each lever worth?
Asking an attribution report to settle a budget argument is like asking a map to tell you whether the journey was worth taking.
A simple governance fix
Agree, at leadership level, which question each measurement source is allowed to answer — and which it is not. Write it down. Then hold agencies and internal teams to it.
The goal is not a single source of truth. It is a shared understanding of which truth each source can tell.
Most organisations already own enough data to make good decisions. What they lack is a clear, independent view of what that data can and cannot prove.