Attribution modeling uses a linear progression of events to attribute value to each campaign in succession. If you saw this campaign and then bought the product, the purchase must have been a result of your previous marketing engagement, right? This is the basic premise of attribution modeling. It assumes that all other events are held constant and that the only impact on your decision was the marketing campaigns you touched. This is the model’s first major flaw.
The attribution model doesn’t account for social perceptions, society’s norms, personal beliefs, or any of the thousands of other influences we have in our lives. Marketers cannot — and should not —assume that a single campaign is the only reason a person engages. This truth has been proven with multiple bits of research. A famous example you may remember is the “theory of seven touches,” which stated that after being exposed to an idea seven times, it becomes a part of your evoke set. Being in an evoke set means that you would know, understand, and remember the stimulus or idea the next time you were exposed to it. If you asked people to list fast-food places, they would quickly be able to ramble off a list from memory.
This list would represent their evoke set of fast-food places. However, if a person sees campaign number eight, and marketers attribute all revenue to this last campaign, they are neglecting the other seven campaigns, which did the majority of the work for them.
