Types of Attribution Modelling

Attribution models help you to zoom into specific touch-points and optimize that point on the sales funnel. With the help of multi-touch attribution modeling, you will get a clear view of traffic sources, acquisition paths, and acquisition channels, and how they affect your sales funnel.

In the following paragraphs, we will compare the different types of attribution modeling, to know which one would be best suited for your business.

#1. First Touch Model

First touch attribution (also known as the first-click attribution) gives all the credits to the first interaction the business had with the customer. This attribution model credits brand awareness as it’s the first touch point at which the client gets to know your brand. Hence, marketers use this model to know what caught the customer’s attention to their brand.

This type of attribution model promotes pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns even when they don’t directly create sales but create higher awareness and engagements. You should adopt the first-touch attribution model if your business has a longer sales cycle rather than a one-time purchase.

#2. Last Touch Attribution

The last touch attribution is also referred to as “the lead creation attribution”, “last-click attribution” or “converting point” because it gives all the credits to the last interaction the business had with a customer before conversion. It’s the default method for big platforms like Google Analytics.

For instance, if a prospect visited your blog post and decided to contact your company for a booking or order, the blog post becomes their “last touch” before creating the lead.

Therefore, this marketing model lets you know which touch-point in the marketing channel or campaign drives your customers to purchase action. Hence, you can easily optimize such an important touchpoint.

#3. Multi-Touch Models

The multi-touch attribution model gives you a better sense of how traffic sources, acquisition paths, and acquisition channels are working, and it allows you to view multiple touchpoints at once. An example of a multi-touch model is a 50/50 credit split between the first touchpoint and lead creation touchpoint. Some other examples of multi-touch models include linear model, time decay, position-based, or custom rule-based models.

#4. Linear Attribution

The linear attribution model divides the credit equally between all the touchpoints in a sales funnel. For instance, if there are three touchpoints in the conversion path, each of these points will get 33.33% of the credit for every sale.

#5. Time Decay Attribution

The time decay attribution is similar to the linear attribution model in that it distributes credit to all the touchpoints but gives more credit to the most recent touchpoints while the least recent interactions get the smallest credit.

#6. U-Shaped Attribution

The U-shaped attribution model is also known as the position-based attribution modeling because it divides the credit into three: the first interaction with the customer receives 40%, the last interaction (lead converting moment) receives 40%, while the remaining 20% is spread between other interaction in-between.

#7. W-Shaped Attribution

In W-shaped attribution modeling, credit is split evenly (33.33%) between the first touch milestone, last touch milestone, and any other qualified milestone in the customer's journey.