Where should attribution results actually live?

Wherever budget decisions are recorded, which in most brands is a recurring document or a meeting agenda rather than a tool. A number in a dashboard requires somebody to remember to look; a number in the decision document does not.

Attribution belongs where the decision happens

The distance between where a number is produced and where a decision is made is where most measurement work dies. Closing it is a design problem, not a tooling one.

By Joris van Huët, Founder & CEOUpdated 2026-10-063 min read

A measurement that lives in a tool nobody opens has the same effect on your budget as no measurement at all. The distance between where a number is produced and where a decision is taken is where most analytics work quietly dies.

Closing that distance is a design problem rather than an integrations problem, and treating it as an integrations problem is how teams end up with a Slack channel full of ignored charts.

Three places a number can live

Where it lives	What has to happen for it to matter	Failure mode
A dashboard	Someone remembers to open it	Nobody opens it
A pushed message	Someone reads it in the moment	It becomes wallpaper
The document where the decision is written	Nothing extra	Somebody has to put it there

The third works and it is the one nobody builds, because it requires deciding where budget decisions are actually recorded. In most brands that is a recurring document or a meeting agenda, not a tool.

What to say plainly about tooling

Causality Engine has no native Slack app and no Notion integration.

That is a smaller claim than "integrates with your workflow" and it is the accurate one.

Why the pushed message so often fails

The predictable fix is to post less: only when something crosses a threshold agreed in advance, and never on ordinary movement in a causal estimate, which is supposed to move.

The related discipline, alerting on the job rather than on the metric, is covered in automating attribution reporting in one afternoon.

What belongs in the decision document

Per channel: the estimate. Then the decision, the date, and what would change it. That last line is what makes the document worth returning to, and it is the part every template omits.

The structure is set out in a defensible attribution report you can export.

The test worth applying

For each place you are considering putting a number, ask what happens if nobody looks at it for a month. If the answer is "nothing", it is a dashboard. If the answer is "the budget review has a hole in it", it is the right place.

Where to start

Before building any pipe, run one read and put the output by hand into wherever your budget decisions are recorded. If it changes the conversation, automate it. If it does not, the pipe would not have helped. That first read is €99 once at Causality Engine, on a Google Analytics export, refundable within 30 days, no questions asked.

Frequently asked questions

Does Causality Engine have a Slack integration?
No native Slack app and no Notion integration.
Why do automated reporting posts stop working?
The fix is to post less: only when something crosses a threshold agreed in advance, and never on ordinary movement, since a causal estimate is expected to move.
Where should attribution results actually live?
Wherever budget decisions are recorded, which in most brands is a recurring document or a meeting agenda rather than a tool. A number in a dashboard requires somebody to remember to look; a number in the decision document does not.

Go deeper: Incrementality testing, explained.

Sixty-second versions of these ideas: Causality Engine on YouTube Shorts.

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