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What is an attribution model?
An attribution model is the rule that decides how credit for a sale gets divided across the touchpoints in a customer journey.
Example: a customer sees a TikTok ad, searches your brand on Google a week later, clicks an email, then buys. That is one order and three touchpoints. The attribution model will split up the credit according to a fixed rule that determines which channels get credited for the order.
At a glance
- ThoughtMetric offers five models: First Touch, Last Touch, Linear Paid, Position-Based, and Multi-Touch. Pricing starts at $99/mo and every feature is included at every tier.
- Rockerbox offers four: First Touch, Last Touch, Even Weight, and Multi-Touch. Pricing is not listed on their website.
- Triple Whale offers seven: First Click, Last Click, Linear All, Linear Paid, Triple Attribution, Triple Attribution + Platform Views, Clicks & Deterministic Views, and Total Impact. The full model set starts on Foundation, from $219/mo, with pricing scaling by annual GMV.
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Northbeam offers seven: First Touch, Last Touch, Last Non-Direct Touch, Linear, Clicks-Only, Clicks + Modeled Views, and Clicks + Deterministic Views. All tiers include the full model set, and Starter begins at $1,500/mo.
1. ThoughtMetric
Attribution models:
- First Touch. All credit goes to the first click. Useful for seeing how customers find you.
- Last Touch. All credit goes to the final touchpoint before purchase.
- Linear Paid. Credit splits equally across every paid touchpoint in the journey.
- Position-Based. Also called U-shaped. The first touch gets 40%, the last touch gets 40%, and the remaining 20% is distributed across the touchpoints in between.
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Multi-Touch. ThoughtMetric's proprietary model, which splits credit across every marketing channel that influenced the sale. If you have post-purchase surveys enabled, the Multi-Touch model factors those responses into how credit gets assigned.
2. Rockerbox
Attribution models:
- First Touch. All credit goes to the first click.
- Last Touch. All credit goes to the final touchpoint before purchase.
- Even Weight. The conversion splits evenly across every touchpoint. Two touchpoints before a purchase means each receives half.
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Multi-Touch. Every touchpoint gets a share of the credit, but the shares are not equal. Rockerbox looks at your past orders to figure out which channels tend to show up when someone buys, then gives more credit to those channels. So instead of following a set rule like 40/40/20, the split is based on what your own customers do.
3. Triple Whale
Attribution models:
- First Click. All credit goes to the first click.
- Last Click. All credit goes to the final touchpoint before purchase.
- Linear All. Credit splits equally across every touchpoint.
- Linear Paid. Credit splits equally across paid touchpoints only.
- Triple Attribution. Each platform receives 100% credit for conversions it touched, based on the last click within that platform.
- Triple Attribution + Platform Views. The same framework with platform-reported view-through conversions layered on top. Those views are modeled by the ad platform rather than verified.
- Clicks & Deterministic Views. Combines click data with verified ad views from participating platforms, distributing credit across both.
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Total Impact. Distributes credit across all touchpoints using click data, survey responses, and a proprietary algorithm.
4. Northbeam
Attribution models:
- First Touch. All credit goes to the first click.
- Last Touch. All credit goes to the final touchpoint. Northbeam calls this their least-used model.
- Last Non-Direct Touch. All credit goes to the last touchpoint, skipping direct visits. This is the closest match to what most ad platforms and Google Analytics report by default.
- Linear. Credit splits equally across all touchpoints.
- Clicks-Only. Uses click data only, with no views or modeling involved. Credit splits across touchpoints like Linear, with one change. Lower-funnel touchpoints receive no credit when an upper-funnel touchpoint exists in the journey. Direct, organic search, branded search, and email or SMS count as lower funnel, and they only receive credit when the entire path is lower funnel.
- Clicks + Modeled Views. Builds on Clicks-Only by adding machine learning estimates of view-through impact. The model tracks impressions and video views, looks for correlations with organic spikes, then assigns credit to the campaigns most likely to have prompted the behavior.
- Clicks + Deterministic Views. Credits views only when an ad platform explicitly verifies the impression and links it to a conversion.
How to choose
Most teams pick one model and stay with it. ThoughtMetric covers what most e-commerce brands need, with deduplicated credit across every ad platform and configurable lookback windows. Every model reconciles to the revenue your store recorded, so attributed totals across channels match reported sales.
What else you get with ThoughtMetric
- Conversion API
- Creative Analytics
- Product attribution
- Custom reports and metrics
- AI Connectors (Claude and ChatGPT)
ThoughtMetric works with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and custom stores.
Book a demo to learn more about ThoughtMetric.
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