Digital customer journeys may include multiple interactions before purchasing. Therefore, if you are only crediting the final interaction before a sale, you are missing the hidden influences that truly drive conversions. Multi-touch attribution solves this by mapping eerie interaction, from the first point of interest to the final decision. Read on to discover how multi-touch attribution works and how to use it.
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Multi-touch Attribution (MTA) is a measurement framework that tracks every digital interaction a customer has before they convert. Rather than giving all the credit to the final click, MTA acknowledges that a sale results from a series of events. Some differentials of multi-touch attribution include:
Full funnel visibility.MTA gives full funnel visibility, including awareness-building touchpoints that often go unmeasured. In a full-funnel advertising strategy, top-of-funnel activities like programmatic DOOH are essential for filling the pipeline. MTA ensures these crucial early interactions are credited for their role in moving the customer along the funnel.
MTA gathers data from disparate sources into a single view. For instance, tracking scripts to identify users and an attribution engine to process the logic. Identity resolution is critical to ensure a mobile click and a desktop purchase are linked to the same person.
The key steps of MTA are:
Understanding the specific math behind different models is key to implementing MTA efficiently. Two of the most common models used are the linear and W-shaped models.
Linear attribution is a multi-touch marketing that gives equal credit to every touchpoint on the customer journey. If a customer interacts with five ads before purchasing, each ad receives 20% of the credit. This model is best for brands with shorter sales cycles, where every interaction is deemed equally important in maintaining momentum.
W-shaped attribution is a multi-touch marketing model that assigns 30% credit each to three key touchpoints, totaling 90%, with the remaining 10% distributed among intermediate interactions. These three touchpoints are usually the first touch, the lead creation, and the opportunity creation. This model is great for complex B2B or high-ticket B2C journeys.
Relying on last click attribution leads to poor spending decisions because it ignores the channels that actually introduced the customer to your brand. MTA provides the evidence needed to scale top-of-funnel campaigns that are working but might not directly close the sale.
It identifies underperforming channels that do not assist in conversions. This allows for the reallocation of the budget to high-impact creatives that move the needle. Because MTA shows which messaging works best at specific stages, applying this framework simplifies calculating the return on investment for every marketing dollar spent.
MTA assigns a percentage of a conversion’s value to different interactions. When a sale is logged, the system reviews the user’s history and distributes the value across touchpoints based on a chosen mathematical model. This allows you to see, for example, that a blog post contributed 15% to a purchase.
The key steps are as follows:
MTA is best suited for complex sales environments and long customer journeys. If your customers typically interact with your brand several times over several days or weeks before converting, MTA is the right model. MTA is the standard for high-consideration industries where the journey involves significant research and multiple touchpoints.
Multi-touch attribution is best suited for complex digital ecosystems, such as brands operating across multiple platforms. In industries like automotive, real estate, or enterprise software, the cost of acquisition is high, and the sales cycle is long. MTA provides the granular data needed to protect these investments, ensuring that every touchpoint is optimized for maximum impact.
The main difference lies in perspective. Single-touch attribution provides a narrow, binary view of success. It assumes that only one moment matters, which is rarely true in a modern browsing environment. Multi-touch attribution provides a panoramic view, acknowledging that the consumer’s decision is an accumulation of trust and information gathered over time.
Multi-touch attribution’s main benefit is that it delivers a clear roadmap for your campaign. By knowing which sequence of touchpoints is most likely to result in a sale, you can replicate that success across your entire customer base.
Thus, MTA gives you the confidence to scale. When you can prove that your top-of-funnel ads are assisting 40% of your total revenue, you can aggressively increase spend in those areas without fear. This data-backed approach gives a competitive advantage to companies.
Finally, MTA eliminates non-productive touchpoints, so you can eliminate the fluff from your journey and shorten your sales cycles.
