A checklist for defending an attribution finding: Seven things to have ready before the meeting, in the order they get asked for, including the two that most people cannot answer under pressure.
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
Seven things, prepared in advance, cover almost every question you will be asked. Two of them are the ones people cannot produce on the spot, and they are the ones that decide the meeting.
The seven
| # | Have ready | Typically asked as |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The design label | "How did you work this out?" |
| 2 | The interval | "How confident are you?" |
| 3 | The coverage share | "Does this cover all our sales?" |
| 4 | The window and why | "Why that period?" |
| 5 | The gap against platform numbers | "This is not what Meta says" |
| 6 | What would change your view | "What if you are wrong?" |
| 7 | The channels you could not measure | "What about X?" |
Five and six are the ones people fumble
Number five is asked in every meeting and answered well in almost none. The platforms will report higher figures because they credit conversions they touched under rules they set, and touches overlap between them. Bring the arithmetic: sum the platform claims for the window, divide by what the store actually took, show the ratio. That converts an awkward moment into the strongest part of your case. The method is in the claim ratio.
Number six is the credibility test. Have a specific answer: an interval that moved past a stated threshold, a holdout that came back differently, coverage falling below a floor. A vague answer here undoes the previous five.
The window question
Be able to say why you chose it in one sentence, and make the sentence about variation rather than convenience. "It contains the two spend changes we made in spring" is a good answer. "It was the last ninety days" invites the follow-up about whether another window would say something different.
If someone asks for a different window, run it. Refusing looks worse than any result.
Preparing seven in advance
Channels below the level of spend at which any method can separate an effect should be named as unmeasured rather than scored. Have that list ready, because someone will ask about their favourite small channel and the honest answer is stronger than an invented number. The arithmetic is in the measurability floor.
What to bring physically
One page. Per channel: estimate, confidence interval, coverage, design label. That is exactly what a €99 one-time read on a Google Analytics export returns, refundable if it does not move a budget decision, and it is deliberately short enough to be read in the room.
The finance-facing framing is on pricing for the CFO conversation and the presentation structure in the attribution report a CFO will subscribe to.
The rehearsal worth doing
Have a colleague ask you the seven questions cold, in order, the day before. Ten minutes, and it surfaces the two you cannot answer while there is still time to prepare them.
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 Debt
Attribution debt is the gap between what your ad platforms claim drove revenue and what actually caused it, carried quarter after quarter into the budget. It is how marketing debt accrues: allocate on claimed conversions long enough and the plan itself becomes the liability.
Attribution Report
Attribution Report shows which touchpoints or channels receive credit for a conversion. It identifies which campaigns drive desired actions.
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.
Conversion
Conversion is a specific, desired action a user takes in response to a marketing message, such as a purchase or a sign-up.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic.
Incrementality
Incrementality measures the true causal impact of a marketing campaign. It quantifies the additional conversions or revenue directly from that activity.
Related Articles
Sixty-second versions of these ideas: Causality Engine on YouTube Shorts.
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