Marketing Attribution
GLOSSARY
Definition
Attribution is the process of assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touches that led to it. A customer sees a Facebook ad, reads a blog post, gets a retargeting email, then buys. Which channel gets credit? First-touch says the ad. Last-touch says the email. Multi-touch splits it. Nobody agrees on the right answer.
Why it matters
Attribution models have been argued about for as long as digital marketing has existed. Google's deprecation of third-party cookies made the problem harder, not easier. Privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA added legal constraints on top of the technical ones. The honest answer is that attribution is always an approximation, and the companies doing it well treat it as directional input rather than ground truth.
Tools in this space
Related terms
CDP · DMP · CRO · UTM parameters · Customer journey