I’m not sure how controversial this is, but I have opinions here, and a lot of experience.
Does anyone remember Custora? They were talking about personas before personas were a mainstream thing. Around that same era, I once set up two attribution platforms at once for the same account, only to get completely different results. I’ve also watched Google brand search get credited with an enormous amount of revenue across different attribution platforms, which is one I still have a hard time accepting at face value.
So when brands ask whether they need an attribution platform, my honest answer is: it depends on what you expect it to do.
Part of the problem is visibility
Click-based attribution is very good at seeing the Google click. It’s historically been much worse at seeing the Meta ad someone viewed three days earlier and never clicked.
“This is the click I can see” and “this channel created the customer” are not the same thing.
Some attribution platforms are getting much better at incorporating view-through data. But you still need to understand where that data is coming from. If the view-through conversion is simply being passed back from Meta, I’m still looking at Meta’s attribution, just in a different dashboard.
So are these platforms useful?
Yes, with limits. We’ve worked with a few that have helped us tremendously. I have my favorites.
We’ve also had accounts tank after following what an attribution platform was telling us too literally. We’ve done it and been burned. We don’t do it anymore.
Today, I use attribution platforms much more to understand overall marketing efficiency than to decide whether an individual ad lives or dies. Outside of promotional periods, I’m very hesitant to kill an ad simply because an attribution platform tells me its ROAS is low. An ad with strong reach and CTR may be introducing people to the brand, while another ad ultimately gets credit for the conversion.
So we look at more than one signal
CAC. MER. Traffic growth. Traffic quality. Platform performance. And ultimately, what is happening to the business.
Because this isn’t really a question of platform data vs. attribution platform. Every platform will tell you why its methodology is the right one. But ultimately, it’s up to a seasoned media buyer to decide what data to rely on, when to question it, and when not to touch something that’s working just because one dashboard says otherwise.