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Guide

Causal Attribution vs Last-Click vs Multi-Touch

These three approaches sound interchangeable and are not. Last-click and multi-touch divide credit for conversions that already happened; causal attribution measures which conversions a channel actually caused. The difference decides whether your budget moves to the right place.

By Joris van Huët, Founder & CEOUpdated 2026-09-09

How each model works

Last-click

All credit to the final touch. Simple, and systematically over-credits bottom-funnel channels.

Multi-touch

Spreads credit across touches by a fixed rule (linear, time-decay, position-based) you did not derive from data.

Causal

Estimates the counterfactual and credits only incremental conversions.

Where each misleads

Last-click buries everything that created demand. Multi-touch feels fairer but the weights are arbitrary and still describe correlation, not causation. Causal attribution is the only one that answers "would this sale have happened anyway?" - but it requires modeling and honest uncertainty.

Find your wasted ad spend in 5–10 minutes.

Watch the model work on a sample store first, no signup. Then upload your last 40–90 days of GA4 sessions and get incremental ROAS with confidence intervals. No pixel, no SDK. €99 per read.

Prefer to talk it through? Book a 20-min call, or read how it works.

Side-by-side

Last-clickMulti-touchCausal
Question answeredWho was last?How to split credit?What was caused?
BasisRuleRuleCounterfactual model
Handles overcountingNoNoYes
OutputCreditCreditIncremental ROAS + interval

Frequently asked questions

Is multi-touch better than last-click?

+

Marginally - it spreads credit, but the weights are still arbitrary and non-causal.

When should I use causal attribution?

+

For budget decisions, where you need caused sales, not credited sales.

Causal attribution check

Find your wasted ad spend
in 5–10 minutes.

Watch the model work on a sample store first, no signup. Then upload your last 40–90 days of GA4 sessions (and Shopify orders if you have them) and get incremental ROAS with confidence intervals. No pixel, no SDK, no integration project. €99 per run. Every quarter on last-click adds to your marketing debt.

Prefer to talk it through first? Book a 20-min call, or read how it works.