Glossary /
Marketing Attribution
Efficiency & cost
Marketing Attribution
Assigning credit for conversions to the marketing touchpoints that influenced them — and the reason your platform totals never add up.
Attribution & Measurement
Unit Economics
Data Governance & Nomenclature
Creative & Delivery
Audiences & Targeting
Mobile & Privacy
Marketing attribution is the practice of assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that influenced it. Because each ad platform credits itself, attributed conversions across platforms almost always exceed reality.
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What is Marketing Attribution?
Marketing attribution answers a deceptively simple question: which marketing efforts deserve credit when someone converts? In a multi-channel world, a buyer might see a TikTok video, click a Google search ad, and convert after a Meta retargeting ad. Attribution decides how that single conversion gets divided across those touches. The core problem is that there is no neutral referee. Every ad platform measures and credits itself using its own data, its own models, and its own lookback windows. Meta counts a conversion it influenced; so does Google; so does TikTok. Add up each platform's self-reported conversions and the sum routinely exceeds the actual number of orders you fielded. This is why "the numbers don't match" is the defining headache of performance marketing. Attribution is not one truth — it's several overlapping claims, each defensible inside its own walled garden and incompatible with the others. Useful attribution work is less about finding the "right" model and more about understanding what each platform is actually counting.
How Marketing Attribution differs across ad platforms
Meta
Meta attributes conversions to its own ads using a default 7-day click / 1-day view window, and counts both click-through and view-through conversions. It credits itself for any conversion it touched within that window — including users who would have converted anyway.
Google Ads
Google now defaults to data-driven attribution and credits conversions to its own clicks within its own lookback window. Branded search in particular over-collects credit because it's the last click before many purchases.
TikTok
TikTok self-attributes using its own click and view windows, and like Meta counts view-through conversions. Because it sits earlier in the funnel, last-click views often undercount its real contribution while TikTok's own platform overstates it.
Common Marketing Attribution misconceptions
Attribution gives you the true source of every sale.
No model recovers ground truth. Attribution is an allocation rule applied to incomplete, platform-biased data — useful for decisions, not a record of what actually happened.
If I trust each platform's dashboard, I'll know what's working.
Each dashboard credits itself, so the totals double-count. Summing platform-reported conversions overstates results — sometimes by 30–100%+ — because the same conversion is claimed by multiple platforms.
Related Terms
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Marketing Attribution in simple terms?
Marketing attribution is how you decide which ads, channels, or campaigns get credit when someone buys. Since most purchases involve more than one touch, attribution is the rule that splits the credit among them.
How does Marketing Attribution work?
Why does Marketing Attribution differ across ad platforms?
How does Clarisights report on Marketing Attribution?
Attribution & Measurement
Unit Economics
Data Governance & Nomenclature
Creative & Delivery
Audiences & Targeting
Mobile & Privacy
Marketing attribution is the practice of assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that influenced it. Because each ad platform credits itself, attributed conversions across platforms almost always exceed reality.
?
?
What is Marketing Attribution?
Marketing attribution answers a deceptively simple question: which marketing efforts deserve credit when someone converts? In a multi-channel world, a buyer might see a TikTok video, click a Google search ad, and convert after a Meta retargeting ad. Attribution decides how that single conversion gets divided across those touches. The core problem is that there is no neutral referee. Every ad platform measures and credits itself using its own data, its own models, and its own lookback windows. Meta counts a conversion it influenced; so does Google; so does TikTok. Add up each platform's self-reported conversions and the sum routinely exceeds the actual number of orders you fielded. This is why "the numbers don't match" is the defining headache of performance marketing. Attribution is not one truth — it's several overlapping claims, each defensible inside its own walled garden and incompatible with the others. Useful attribution work is less about finding the "right" model and more about understanding what each platform is actually counting.
How Marketing Attribution differs across ad platforms
Meta
Meta attributes conversions to its own ads using a default 7-day click / 1-day view window, and counts both click-through and view-through conversions. It credits itself for any conversion it touched within that window — including users who would have converted anyway.
Google Ads
Google now defaults to data-driven attribution and credits conversions to its own clicks within its own lookback window. Branded search in particular over-collects credit because it's the last click before many purchases.
TikTok
TikTok self-attributes using its own click and view windows, and like Meta counts view-through conversions. Because it sits earlier in the funnel, last-click views often undercount its real contribution while TikTok's own platform overstates it.
Common Marketing Attribution misconceptions
Attribution gives you the true source of every sale.
No model recovers ground truth. Attribution is an allocation rule applied to incomplete, platform-biased data — useful for decisions, not a record of what actually happened.
If I trust each platform's dashboard, I'll know what's working.
Each dashboard credits itself, so the totals double-count. Summing platform-reported conversions overstates results — sometimes by 30–100%+ — because the same conversion is claimed by multiple platforms.
Related Terms
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Marketing Attribution in simple terms?
Marketing attribution is how you decide which ads, channels, or campaigns get credit when someone buys. Since most purchases involve more than one touch, attribution is the rule that splits the credit among them.
How does Marketing Attribution work?
Why does Marketing Attribution differ across ad platforms?
How does Clarisights report on Marketing Attribution?
See Viewable Impression across every channel in one report
See Viewable Impression across every channel in one report
See viewability and vCPM across every platform—display, video, programmatic— in one normalized report, instead of reconciling vendor numbers by hand.
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