Piecing it Together: The Puzzle of Attribution in Omnichannel Marketing

In a perfect world, a customer clicks on an ad, falls in love with your product, and converts on the spot. You know exactly which campaign worked, which channel gets credit, and where to increase your ad spend. Easy.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. The customer journey isn’t single-channel or linear. We live in the age of omnichannel marketing. The reality is that a single purchase might be influenced by a Google search, a TikTok video, a webinar, a promotional email, or a conversation with your sales team.

Attribution—figuring out which touchpoints actually matter in the buyer’s journey—is no longer simple. It’s a messy, multi-source puzzle. And without solving it, you risk spending your budget in the wrong places.

So, let’s dive in and examine what attribution really means in omnichannel marketing campaigns and what challenges we face as marketers to assign credit where credit is due.  

 

WHAT IS ATTRIBUTION?

At its core, attribution is about assigning credit to each step that helps take a customer from “just looking” to “just bought.”

In single-channel or linear journeys, this used to be easy. But today, marketers rely on a mix of digital and offline channels working together, which means that the process of attribution has had to evolve.

Let’s look at a few common attribution models:

• First-touch: Gives all credit to the first interaction. If we want to focus on awareness metrics, this is a great approach, but it offers little insight in terms of conversions.  

• Last-touch: Credits the final click before a conversion. Many platforms use this as the default model, but it represents an oversimplification of the customer journey.

• Linear: Spreads credit evenly across all touchpoints. Here, the whole journey is taken into account, but not very strategically.

• Time-decay: Gives more credit to recent touchpoints. This model is well-suited to long nurture cycles.

• U-shaped (position-based): Emphasizes the first and last touchpoints, with less credit to the middle. Here, there is an emphasis on the awareness and decision stages of the funnel, but the model is apt to under-credit important engagement actions.

• Data-driven: Uses machine learning to assign weights based on actual conversion data. This model is ideal—but requires strong data hygiene and scale.

Each model has its own advantages and its own bias. In complex, omnichannel campaigns with many different touchpoints, it becomes increasingly important to move beyond simplistic models and embrace AI-powered attribution, which can analyze massive, messy datasets and zero in on what is driving conversions.

 

WHY DOES ATTRIBUTION GET COMPLICATED IN OMNICHANNEL CAMPAIGNS?

In the world of omnichannel marketing, the customer journey rarely follows a predictable path. The customer journey nowadays is non-linear, fragmented, and often, a portion of the journey is undertaken while the user is still anonymous.

Here’s why attribution is so tricky today:

• Device-hopping behavior: Your lead might see an Instagram ad on a mobile, Google your product on a laptop, and sign up for your newsletter from a desktop at work. The right tracking set-up is essential for connecting the dots.
  
  
• Walled gardens: Platforms like Meta, Google, and Amazon often don’t share data with each other—or with you! In these cases, each platform may allow advertising and data analysis within its own ecosystem using proprietary attribution and tracking methods, while limiting access to raw data for export to other platforms.
  
  
• Offline influences: Sales calls, print materials, events, or word-of-mouth are all powerful but hard to track.
  
  
• Privacy regulations: With the deprecation of third-party cookies and tighter data regulations, user-level tracking is more limited, making granular attribution even more challenging.

The result? A lot of guesswork and misallocated spending.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT ATTRIBUTION STRATEGIES FOR OMNICHANNEL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS 

The key to approaching attribution for omnichannel marketing is to stop aiming for perfect attribution—and start aiming for actionable insight.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Unify your tracking setup:
   • Implement clean, consistent UTM parameters
   • Your CRM and ad platforms must be connected. A Customer Data Platform (CDP) like FLYDE can bring it all together (more on that later)
     
     
2. Invest in smarter analytics:
   • Develop funnel-based dashboards tied to your KPIs
   • Implement machine learning models if your data volume allows
     
     
3. Set realistic expectations:
   • Attribution will never be 100% accurate
   • Focus on directional insight that can inform your strategic decisions
   • Align attribution analysis to business outcomes (not just clicks)

Instead of chasing perfection, chase progress. Map the journeys, unify the data, and use a tool like FLYDE to reveal insight. The goal isn’t to give perfect credit; it’s to make smarter, more confident decisions.

 

FLYDE’S VISION ON SMARTER ATTRIBUTION 

To address these omnichannel challenges and the need for a unified view, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) like FLYDE becomes essential for consolidating data from various sources.

FLYDE centralizes data from touchpoints across paid media, CRM, social, email, web navigation, and offline events. Whether you’re working with dozens of fragmented sources or just trying to get a full view of the customer journey, FLYDE brings your data together to offer clarity and insight.

Here’s a real-world example:

Imagine you run a lead-gen campaign using a CPC paid search campaign in Google, Meta ads, a product webinar, and follow-up email flows. With FLYDE:

• All touchpoints are stitched together—even across platforms.
• You can see how many leads saw an ad and attended the webinar.
• You can compare performance across acquisition and nurture phases.
• Attribution is based on your journey logic, not just Google’s last-click default.

This kind of transparency doesn’t just look good in reports—it drives better decision-making. When you know what’s working, you can double down. When something’s underperforming, you can pivot fast. Ultimately, effective attribution leads to optimized advertising spend, a deeper understanding of customer behavior, and improved ROI.

Contact us for a demo and we can show you how FLYDE approaches omnichannel attribution in our easy-to-use Customer Data Platform.