What Truly Matters Isn’t Always What’s Most Visible: A Fresh Perspective on Attribution

  • Trends
    E-commerce
    Social Media
  • Sector
    IT and Communications
  • Countries
    Global
Jun 30 2025

Attribution Isn’t About Tracking More—It’s About Making Smarter Decisions

In today’s marketing landscape, attribution is no longer just about dividing credit between channels—especially in the digital space. It’s about precisely understanding which elements are actually driving business outcomes. Is the surge in traffic due to a well-executed video campaign, or the result of a tactical promotion that happened to align with a surge in demand?

At this stage, it’s no longer just about metrics. What brands demand today are clarity and confidence: data-backed decisions, justifiable investments, and models that can efficiently replicate success.

That’s where attribution becomes truly valuable—not as a flashy dashboard or another tool in the martech stack, but as a strategic lever to understand what’s happening, and most importantly, why—with real business insight.

Technology Is a Tool—Strategy Is the Driver.

Platforms like Campaign Manager 360 offer high levels of user journey tracking before a conversion. But the real value doesn´t lie  in the tool itself, but in the quality of the questions we ask through it. Whether you use a linear, time decay, or position-based model doesn’t matter if you’re unclear on what outcome you’re optimizing for.

Effective attribution relies on a strong foundation:

  • Clean, consistent data.
  • Properly tagged campaigns.
  • Comprehensive mapping of user touchpoints. 

With these in place, data becomes a strategic signal—not just a performance report. Because while not everything is about the numbers, without them, navigating the path forward becomes guesswork.

Moving Beyond Last-Click: Measuring Impact, Not Just Visibility

More advanced brands are shifting away from last-click logic and focusing on a more meaningful question: Would this conversion have happened without the campaign?

That’s the essence of incrementality-based attribution. It doesn’t aim to divide credit—it aims to measure causality. In other words, how much of the result can be directly linked to a specific advertising effort?

This approach is especially valuable in low-traceability environments—like Connected TV, certain social formats, or brand awareness campaigns without a direct call to action. These channels often have a real effect, even if it isn’t immediately trackable, and are frequently undervalued if we only focus on what’s measurable.

Building a Reliable Attribution Model in Campaign Manager 360

It all starts with solid, well-organized data. For attribution models to serve as true tools for analysis and decision-making, you need:

  • Rigorous campaign tagging (Floodlights, UTMs).
  • A consistent naming convention across platforms.
  • A stable and well-defined conversion tracking system. 

Add complete traceability across channels, formats, and devices, and you have the foundation needed to apply various attribution models—last click, linear, position-based, or Data-Driven Attribution powered by machine learning.

But by 2025, many brands are going beyond the idea of simply “assigning credit.” Instead, they’re aiming for something bigger: demonstrating real business impact. That’s why attribution is evolving into a strategic practice, combining platform-level data with high-level business insights.

Incrementality-Based Attribution: Measuring What Truly Changes Because of the Campaign

This approach starts with a powerful premise: It’s not just about knowing which channels were part of a conversion journey—it’s about understanding whether the conversion would have happened without the campaign.

Unlike traditional models, incremental attribution measures causality. That means pinpointing how much of the outcome is due to the campaign and how much would have occurred naturally.

This is particularly important in today’s marketing environment, where ROI pressure is high, and data traceability is shrinking—especially in hard-to-attribute channels like Connected TV (CTV), upper-funnel formats, or brand-focused campaigns.

Hybrid Models: Merging Digital Attribution with Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)

Digitally mature brands are adopting hybrid attribution models that combine two powerful approaches:

  • The granular, tactical precision of digital attribution.
  • The holistic, strategic view of Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM).

MMM has made a comeback thanks to:

  • Advances in AI-powered modeling.
  • The decline of third-party cookies.
  • The growing need to understand the combined effects of multiple variables (channels, pricing, promotions, seasonality, etc.). 

How Does the Hybrid Model Work?
We integrate digital and offline campaign data, investment figures, sales channel info, and commercial policies—then cross-reference results from MMM with digital attribution insights. This delivers a complete picture:

  • MMM offers macro-level, strategic context.
  • Digital attribution provides actionable, channel-level insights. 

At LLYC, thanks to our deep experience across industries, we tailor attribution models to fit the unique business context—not just platform defaults—ensuring tangible impact on results.

It’s not about collecting more data. It’s about connecting data intelligently to make better decisions. And today, that’s a real competitive edge.