Advertising and marketing metrics
Attribution
Assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that preceded it. Every model is an approximation.
Attribution is the assignment of credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that preceded it. Every ad platform and analytics tool does this with its own model and its own window, which is why the same order can be claimed by Google Ads, Meta and an email flow at the same time, and why platform numbers do not add up to store revenue.
The common models are last click (all credit to the final click), data-driven (credit spread by observed patterns, the default in GA4 and Google Ads) and various position-based rules. The window is how long after an interaction a conversion still counts, such as seven days after a click or one day after a view.
When an assistant pulls numbers from several connected sources, attribution is the first thing to make explicit. Ask it to state which model and window each figure uses, compare against the store's own order count, and use blended measures such as MER for the top-line view. Incrementality tests are the only way to know what advertising actually caused, and no attribution model replaces them.