attribution modeling

Sep 9

Why Your Attribution Model Is Lying to You

As third-party cookies disappear and signal loss accelerates, marketing platforms are filling data gaps with modeled estimates—then presenting them with the visual authority of measured facts. Brands treating these probabilistic guesses as ground truth are systematically misfunding channels and campaigns, particularly favoring channels where modeling fills the largest gaps rather than where actual performance justifies spend. The risk is the false confidence these polished dashboards create when the underlying inputs are fundamentally uncertain.

theme-brand marketing strategy attribution modeling budget allocation

Jul 14

Search's hidden dependency on paid social spending

Source: Search Engine Land

Search performance metrics are systematically misleading because they ignore the upstream funnel work that paid social performs—awareness, consideration, and audience qualification that converts into high-intent search traffic. When marketers cut social budgets based on ROAS comparisons alone, they're cannibalizing the demand generation that makes search efficient. Search ROAS often deteriorates months after social budget cuts, despite appearing as the stronger channel. This attribution gap creates a structural incentive for budget misallocation, favoring the last-click channel while starving the channels that create searchable audiences in the first place.