Is Multi-Touch Attribution Enough for Marketing Decisions or Do You Use Additional Methods?

·Apr 24, 2026 01:31 PM·

Question for the group. Multi-touch attribution has given us much better visibility into the funnel, but I’m not sure it’s made decisions any easier. When every channel shows up somewhere in the journey, it becomes harder to separate contribution from impact. So when it’s time to shift budget or prioritize programs, attribution alone doesn’t always give a clear answer. Feels like the next step is understanding what actually drives outcomes. How others are approaching this. Is multi-touch attribution enough for you, or are you layering something else on top?

5 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Peter E.
·
·
My approach has been to attribute based on which touch or channel actually made the conversion happen. It's likely most leads are getting multiple touches, but which is the one that actually inspired an action?
Abbas S.
·
(edited)·
This is the downside of multi-touch attribution more visibility but less clarity on what actually drives results Not every touchpoint has equal impact what’s helped us is focusing more on lead quality and targeting because when the audience is right it’s much easier to see which channels truly influence outcomes Curious if you’re looking at it from an quality lead as well?
Jakub S.
·
(edited)·
Nikhat I. I would look at this from 3 perspectives, considering:
1.
all touchpoints
2.
First touch
3.
Last touch
I usually add a custom layer (ratio report) on top of ordinary reporting that tells me: this percentage out of overall ad spend brought this percentage of out of overall conversions. Screen attached for better illustration. For example, on line 17 you can see that 34% of overall ad spend brought 16% of overall conversions. This can be applied to markets, channels, campaigns etc. Based on this, you'd get some insights which channels might be less significant contributors. To validate the idea, I'd decrease/pause them in certain markets to see the impact on the business.
Damian O.
·
·
Honestly, budget decisions are better made using Mix Media Modeling. Attribution is a tricky one to look at for budget. But if you don't want to get into it Multi-touch is best for assessing which channels are working. First and last touch are context that you can add to the reason behind the decision
Mani
·
·
Use MTA (like markov chain) to optimize the Experience: Decide what the user sees next based on where they are in the Markov transition matrix. For example someone seeing a product page what is the next highly likely page they will go to. Use MMM to optimize the Engine: Decide where the next $100k goes based on the saturation curves.

Peter E.
·
·
My approach has been to attribute based on which touch or channel actually made the conversion happen. It's likely most leads are getting multiple touches, but which is the one that actually inspired an action?
Abbas S.
·
(edited)·
This is the downside of multi-touch attribution more visibility but less clarity on what actually drives results Not every touchpoint has equal impact what’s helped us is focusing more on lead quality and targeting because when the audience is right it’s much easier to see which channels truly influence outcomes Curious if you’re looking at it from an quality lead as well?
Jakub S.
·
(edited)·
Nikhat I. I would look at this from 3 perspectives, considering:
1.
all touchpoints
2.
First touch
3.
Last touch
I usually add a custom layer (ratio report) on top of ordinary reporting that tells me: this percentage out of overall ad spend brought this percentage of out of overall conversions. Screen attached for better illustration. For example, on line 17 you can see that 34% of overall ad spend brought 16% of overall conversions. This can be applied to markets, channels, campaigns etc. Based on this, you'd get some insights which channels might be less significant contributors. To validate the idea, I'd decrease/pause them in certain markets to see the impact on the business.
Damian O.
·
·
Honestly, budget decisions are better made using Mix Media Modeling. Attribution is a tricky one to look at for budget. But if you don't want to get into it Multi-touch is best for assessing which channels are working. First and last touch are context that you can add to the reason behind the decision
Mani
·
·
Use MTA (like markov chain) to optimize the Experience: Decide what the user sees next based on where they are in the Markov transition matrix. For example someone seeing a product page what is the next highly likely page they will go to. Use MMM to optimize the Engine: Decide where the next $100k goes based on the saturation curves.