Own the pipe: A number you cannot export is a number you are renting. What to check about keys, exports and retention before your attribution history becomes someone else's asset.
Read the full article below for detailed insights and actionable strategies.
The attribution problem
One sale. Four channels. 400% credit claimed.
Reported revenue: €400 · Actual revenue: €100 · Gap: €300
If your attribution history exists only inside a vendor's dashboard, you do not own it, and the day you switch tools you start again from zero. Portability is decided at signup, not at cancellation.
This is not a warning about villains. Most vendors are not withholding anything deliberately. It is simply that export is nobody's priority until a customer leaves, and by then the customer has no leverage.
The four questions to settle before you commit
| Question | The answer you want | The answer that should worry you |
|---|---|---|
| Can I export every historical read? | Yes, in a machine-readable format, self-serve | Yes, contact support |
| What does the export contain? | Estimate, interval, coverage, design, per channel per window | A rendered chart or a PDF |
| Who can create and rotate keys? | You, from an account you control | Your account manager |
| What happens to my history if I cancel? | It stays exportable for a stated period | Not stated |
The second row is where most exports disappoint. A CSV of midpoints is not your attribution history, it is a screenshot of it. Without the confidence interval and the coverage share, next year's you cannot tell which of last year's numbers were strong and which were noise wearing a decimal point.
Why history is the asset
The single read is a decision input. The history is something better: it is the record that lets you check whether your decisions worked. A brand with two years of per-channel causal estimates, each with its interval, can ask whether the channels it scaled actually delivered, and whether the ones it cut were missed. A brand with two years of dashboard screenshots cannot.
That record is also what makes the next vendor evaluation honest, because you can replay your own history against a new method rather than accepting whatever the new method says about the last thirty days. We made the general case in you do not own your attribution data.
Keys are an ownership question too
An API key you cannot create yourself is a dependency on a person. An API key you cannot rotate yourself is a security problem waiting for a staff change. Both are ownership questions dressed as convenience questions, and both are worth resolving before the first invoice rather than after the first incident.
Scope the key to the job. A reporting integration needs read access to reports and nothing else. If the only key on offer is one that can also change settings or billing, that is a design decision the vendor made and a risk you inherit.
Where this lands on Causality Engine
The input is your own Google Analytics export, so the source data never stops being yours. Developer API keys and the MCP server are on Pro at €299 a month, which is also the tier with unlimited uploads and the direct integrations. The company is registered in the Netherlands and the data residency question is answered in the privacy policy rather than in a sales conversation.
The €99 one-time read is deliberately a small commitment: one export, one read, a full refund if it does not move a budget decision. That is a different shape of relationship from a platform that needs a pixel on your site before it can tell you anything, which we covered in attribution without a pixel or engineering.
The one-line test
Ask a vendor to send you an example of the export a cancelling customer receives. The speed and the specificity of the answer tell you more than the feature page does.
Related answers
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Key Terms in This Article
Analytics
Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data. It reveals customer behavior and measures campaign performance.
Attribution
Attribution identifies user actions that contribute to a desired outcome and assigns value to each. It reveals which marketing touchpoints drive conversions.
Attribution Report
Attribution Report shows which touchpoints or channels receive credit for a conversion. It identifies which campaigns drive desired actions.
Causality
Causality is the relationship where one event directly causes another, essential for identifying specific actions that drive desired outcomes in marketing.
Confidence Interval
Confidence Interval is a statistical range of values that likely contains the true value of a metric. In marketing analytics, it quantifies uncertainty around estimates, indicating the precision of an outcome or causal effect.
Dashboards
Dashboards are graphical user interfaces that provide at-a-glance views of key performance indicators (KPIs). They monitor campaign performance and visualize attribution insights.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic.
Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy is a statement disclosing how a website collects, uses, discloses, and manages customer data.
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Sixty-second versions of these ideas: Causality Engine on YouTube Shorts.
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