Customer question
“Which digital touchpoints contributed to conversions?”
What this solution does
If a customer saw a display ad, then a social ad, then searched for the brand and bought — MTA tries to work out how much credit each of those three moments deserves.
Specifically, it answers: Across the multiple ads and channels a customer interacts with before converting, which touchpoints deserve credit, and how should that credit be split?
How it works
Individual customer journeys (sequences of impressions and clicks across channels) are reconstructed, then a credit-allocation rule — last click, first touch, linear, or position-based — assigns a share of the conversion to each touchpoint in the journey.
Data requirements
- Individual-level or device-level touchpoint data across channels
- Timestamped sequence of impressions/clicks per user journey
- Conversion event data linked back to the journey
- Consistent identity resolution across touchpoints (increasingly difficult with privacy changes)
Discovery questions
Can touchpoints actually be stitched into a single customer journey?
MTA depends on identity resolution across channels, which has become significantly harder as third-party cookies and device identifiers are restricted.
Which attribution rule does the business currently use, and why?
Different rules produce very different channel-level credit, and switching rules can dramatically change which channels look 'effective.'
Is this meant to replace or complement an MMM view?
MTA and MMM answer different questions and are often most useful together, not as substitutes.
Build an experiment
Generate synthetic data
Data readiness
Run model / simulation
Results
Business ⟷ Technical interpretation
Under a attributionModel model, topCreditedChannel receives the most conversion credit — but switching to a different model changes the ranking, which is worth being upfront about with stakeholders.
Shown as a template — the highlighted tokens are filled in once the model has been run.
What would you do next?
- Compare results across at least two attribution rules before making a channel decision
- Treat MTA as complementary to MMM, not a replacement for it
Solution & vendor landscape
Implementation approaches