# Attribution

> The method by which a sale is credited to the marketing that produced it.

Source: https://barkingcat.ai/terms-of-trade/attribution/

## Terms of Trade · Edition 1: The PE deck

Definition

The method by which a sale is credited to the marketing that produced it. Last-click gives all the credit to the final touchpoint, multi-touch shares it across several, and every advertising platform runs its own model that credits itself, which is why the channels’ attributed revenue added together usually exceeds the revenue the business actually took.

Field note

Attribution is best described as a stab in the dark, because most marketers do not really know where their customers are coming from, and so cannot turn anything off. That is the commercial consequence: a budget that can only ever grow, because every channel has a report proving it was responsible for the sale.

Board question

Which channel has been switched off in the last twelve months, and what happened to sales when it was?

Applied through

[Incrementality](https://barkingcat.ai/terms-of-trade/incrementality/), the next entry, is the honest answer to this one; [Channel Resilience](https://barkingcat.ai/the-cats-whiskers/channel-resilience/) in the Cat’s Whiskers reads the dependency it creates.

Related terms
- [Incrementality](https://barkingcat.ai/terms-of-trade/incrementality/)
- [ROAS](https://barkingcat.ai/terms-of-trade/roas/)
- [GEO](https://barkingcat.ai/terms-of-trade/geo/)
- [Marketplace](https://barkingcat.ai/terms-of-trade/marketplace/)

## Contact

steve@barkingcat.ai

Barking Cat Advisory Limited. Registered in England and Wales, company number 17338003.