Marketing Attribution Models Compared: Pick One You Trust

Attribution assigns credit for revenue to marketing touches, and every model does it by assumption, not observation. No spreadsheet knows that a podcast episode planted the idea two quarters before the first form fill. Accepting that limit up front saves you from chasing a perfect model that does not exist.

The practical goal is decision support, not courtroom truth. You want a consistent lens that tells you whether to shift budget between channels, and that is a much lower bar than perfectly reconstructing a buying committee's journey.

First touch gives all credit to the channel that created the contact, which makes it a demand creation lens. It systematically flatters top-of-funnel channels and ignores everything that nurtured the deal. Last touch credits the final pre-conversion interaction, flattering high-intent channels like branded search and demo campaigns.

Both are useful precisely because their bias is legible. Run them side by side and the gap between them is informative: channels that win on first touch but vanish on last touch are creating demand someone else is harvesting.

Linear splits credit evenly across all touches, which sounds fair and mostly rewards channels that generate lots of low-effort interactions. U-shaped weights the first touch and the converting touch heavily, matching the intuition that creation and conversion matter most. Time-decay favors touches closest to the deal.

Data-driven models let an algorithm assign weights from your own conversion patterns, which requires touch volume most B2B companies simply do not have. With long sales cycles, small deal counts, and offline touches, the algorithm often fits noise while looking authoritative.

Pick the model that matches your dominant question. If you are deciding where to create demand, lean first touch or U-shaped. If you are tuning conversion spend, lean last touch or time-decay. Then commit for at least two or three quarters, because switching models mid-year destroys every trend line you own.

Whatever you choose, invest more in tracking than in modeling. Consistent UTMs, a clean campaign taxonomy, and CRM touchpoints flowing through one signal layer will improve your decisions more than any model upgrade. Garbage touch data makes every model produce confident garbage.