Why last-click misleads in B2B
Last-click attribution hands all the credit to the final touch, usually a branded search or a direct visit, and starves the upper-funnel channels that actually started the journey. In a buying cycle with 6 to 20 touches, that is not a rounding error, it is a wrong decision about where to spend.
Common models
- Linear splits credit evenly across every touch.
- Time-decay weights touches closer to the conversion more heavily.
- Position-based front- and back-loads credit to the first and last touch.
No model is perfect; privacy changes and dark social mean some touches are invisible. We use multi-touch attribution as a directional guide alongside pipeline and self-reported attribution, not as a single source of truth. For how we pick a single source of truth across the platforms, see Google, Meta, and your CRM disagree on conversions.
Common questions
What is multi-touch attribution?
It is a way of crediting a conversion across all the touchpoints a buyer engaged with, instead of giving 100% of the credit to the first or last click. This better reflects multi-step B2B buying journeys.
Why is multi-touch attribution important for B2B?
B2B deals involve many touches over long cycles. Single-touch models over-credit the final step and under-fund the channels that created demand, leading to misallocated budget.