A visual field guide to every major model — what each one sees, how it splits the credit, and when to reach for it.
It's tempting to argue about which attribution model is correct. It's the wrong argument. A model is exactly that — a model. A way to render, interpret, and analyze reality, each one offering a different perspective on the same journey.
No single method is the truth. Each is a lens, useful for seeing certain things and quiet about others. So rather than crowning a winner, pick the lens that fits what you're trying to understand — and whichever you choose, do it well.
How to read every diagram below. Each model is shown against the same five-touchpoint journey. The question in every case: how should 100% of the credit be split across these touches?
All the credit goes to the very first interaction — the touch that created awareness. Best for understanding which channels are good at finding people and starting journeys.
All the credit goes to the final interaction before conversion. Simple and popular — good for seeing what tends to be present at the moment someone converts.
Like last-touch, but it ignores a final direct visit — someone typing your URL because they already knew you. Credit passes back to the last marketing touch that did the real work.
A final direct visit is ignored, so the retargeting ad keeps the credit.
Credit is split evenly across every touchpoint. The most democratic model — it assumes each interaction contributed the same, and refuses to play favorites.
Credit grows as touches get nearer to conversion, following a decay curve. The recent touches earn the most; earlier ones fade. The steepness is tunable to your sales cycle.
Forty percent to the first touch, forty to the lead-creating touch, and the remaining twenty spread across the middle. It honors both the introduction and the conversion.
Heavy credit to three anchor positions — the first touch, the middle, and the last — with the rest shared. Built to reward the key turning points of a journey rather than a single moment.
The W-shaped idea extended one anchor further — adding a fourth heavily-weighted position deeper in the path. It spans the entire journey, from the very first touch to the very last.
Instead of a fixed rule, the weights are learned from your actual data — comparing paths that converted against those that didn't to estimate each touch's real contribution. The distribution is bespoke to your funnel.
You set the weights by hand, encoding what your team believes matters — a heavier hand on high-intent touches, a lighter one on early awareness. Fully yours to define, and to defend.
Every model above answers the same question — how to divide credit across a set of touchpoints. What makes that answer trustworthy is everything feeding into it. The model is the fourth step — powerful, but only as good as the three that feed it and the milestones it connects to.