Philadelphia retailer John Wannamaker said over a century ago, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Fast forward to 2025, and we have thousands of advanced marketing tools at our fingertips and million-dollar marketing budgets. But we still aren’t in a much better position when it comes to figuring out what truly drives value.
It’s time for some real talk about marketing attribution.
I’m Lee Riley, and I’ve been in digital marketing for over a decade. I’m currently a Senior Performance Marketer for Funnel and have deep expertise in strategic data analysis. As a global agency’s former ‘Head of Social’, I can confirm attribution was the BANE of my performance marketing career. And I’m not alone.
At Cannes 2024, it was estimated that only 6% of advertising drives any value. But marketing attribution, the toolset digital marketers are forced to rely on, cannot tell you with any certainty which 6% it is.
It’s time for change.
If you’re in marketing and relying on old attribution models for insights, this might be the most important article you’ll read this year.
Marketing attribution is broken
Bottom line: attribution oversimplifies customer journeys and relies on flawed, incomplete data.
The biggest problem is attribution doesn’t give us enough information to determine which 6%.
Marketing attribution has always been a battleground of conflicting data, tools and opinions. For years, Google Analytics (GA) stood as the industry’s go-to solution, promising to be a reliable source of truth in a chaotic digital landscape.
But as marketing grew more complex, so did the cracks in GA’s armor, exposing its limitations in tracking multi-channel journeys, cross-device interactions and full-funnel strategies.
This isn’t just a technical issue — it’s a strategic one, and it’s holding us back.
Google Analytics is not the solution we were promised
The 'rule of 7,' first coined by 1930s movie moguls, suggests consumers need seven brand impressions before making a purchase. But today’s consumer journey is far more complex, with touchpoints multiplying exponentially.
Despite this, many e-commerce strategies rely on an average of just six touchpoints — far below what’s needed to drive real engagement, particularly in B2B, where DreamData estimates the average journey involves 62 interactions across four channels.
Attribution tools like Google Analytics just haven’t kept up.
Google’s own research calls the customer journey the “Messy Middle,” a tangled web of interactions — search engines, social media, forums, review sites, branded pages and more — that analytics tools fail to map correctly.
The result? Oversimplified reporting that credits the last click and sidelines the real drivers of incremental growth.
Let me tell you a story from my Head of Social days:
The technical shortcomings of Google Analytics are no secret, yet it’s still the crutch many clients are forced to lean on to analyze cross-channel digital data, craft so-called strategies and flaunt "success"— primarily to uninformed stakeholders. Ironically, these are often the same people controlling budgets across disconnected teams, whether online or offline, brand or performance, search or social.
As Head of Social, I would analyze and optimize using my ad platform data, which is skewed itself, in order to drive incremental value. But success would never show up in GA.
My discussions on this would be long and understandably confusing to the uninitiated and would result in a mutually frustrating lack of ‘buy-in’ and trust. This was especially so when I started optimizing toward campaigns with a lower ROI in Meta.
I knew they were more incremental because the channel was no longer taking credit for purchases that were already going to happen via current customers or from other search efforts. I even had the tests to prove it, but my data was so siloed that I felt like I was simply knocking at the locked door of old attribution habits.
This proved even harder when trying to implement full-funnel marketing plans that prioritized upper-funnel algorithms and pushed for creativity and reach, not last-click conversions.
Justifying your marketing mix when your success doesn’t show in your platforms is a constant battle, particularly when you’re targeting full-funnel outcomes.
Clients often hit diminishing returns way earlier than they realize, but tools like Google Analytics, with their oversimplified attribution models, keep the illusion of success alive. By glossing over inefficiencies and serving up "good enough" metrics, GA lets complacency thrive, stalling real optimization and stifling strategic innovation.
This juggling act, between technical attribution challenges, logic and testing, media planning and stakeholder bottlenecks, as well as retainers that didn’t even allow time for the education needed to collaborate and strategize properly, significantly hampered potential revenue. At the very least, they made the progress much slower.
Unfortunately, we’re historically indentured to tools like GA, which just do not play well with mobile, across devices and browsers or on full-funnel channels like Facebook. That’s just the reality for many brands.
Take this example: YOUR two site visits before purchasing a product — one on desktop and another on mobile — would very likely be seen as two separate people.
Because GA can’t attribute the cross-channel behavior, it makes an incorrect sales attribution.
That initial META, TikTok or SNAP click gets no credit. On the other hand, direct, organic or search look like primary revenue drivers for being that last click. Even with so many touchpoints contributing to a sale, this last-touch attribution excludes earlier touchpoints.
The reality is, that even when I could quantify that Facebook, for example, was undervalued in analytics tools by up to 90% on last-click conversions alone, the logic still wasn’t enough to justify the sweeping strategic changes a proud client might need to drive increased incremental revenue from their marketing budget.
As they say, old habits die hard when marketing budgets are involved.
When we use the same old methods, knowing their weaknesses and being unable to mitigate them, we commit marketing insanity.
Don’t get me wrong. Ad platforms, customer engagement and web analytics tools are still part of the solution. They are incredibly useful for channel experts and concurrent teams — I use them every day. But the reality is that marketing attribution was already difficult years ago. Now it’s just easier to ignore the challenges and adopt a “good enough” attitude.
Strengths and weaknesses of the current toolkit
On that note, let’s evaluate our immediate toolkit. These tools are being used by individual people to form individual opinions that are hard to alter.
Ad platform analytics
These are the metrics and data provided directly by platforms like Facebook, Google Ads or LinkedIn:
There are many strengths:
- They provide rich insights from their first-party, logged-in data.
- This helps optimize bottom-of-funnel actions like purchases and lead generation.
- Platform-specific metrics help fine-tune strategies within each ecosystem.
But weaknesses abound:
- You have limited visibility outside of the platform (e.g., customer behavior on websites or offline).
- It’s difficult to track the full customer journey due to reliance on platform-specific data.
- Tracking outside of the platform has become harder due to the decline of third-party cookies.
- Even if optimized correctly to ad platform data, conversions still might not be incremental or drive as much value as other channels with opposing attribution challenges: meaning some channels look better in your media mix than they should.
Web and app analytics tools like Google Analytics
These tools generate data on website activity: think page views, user behavior, traffic sources and conversions. They offer a snapshot of how people interact with your digital presence.
Strengths include:
- GA provides a detailed view of user behavior on owned digital channels.
- It tracks key metrics that can help optimize website and app performance.
- You can see insights to enhance the user experience and increase conversions.
Weaknesses:
- You are typically limited to online data, missing out on offline touchpoints.
- Challenges arise from the fading accuracy of third-party cookies, leading to fragmented data.
- No matter what they promise, it’s extremely difficult to track users across multiple devices and sessions, severely affecting mobile-centric channels like social media.
Customer engagement tools
These are your CRM systems or e-commerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce.
Strengths:
- Provides valuable insights into post-conversion behavior and customer lifetime value.
- Helps in tracking repeat purchases and long-term customer relationships.
- Integrates well with automation tools for personalized marketing follow-ups.
Weaknesses:
- You have limited visibility into the early stages of the customer journey, such as the awareness and consideration phases.
- These platforms often rely on simple first-touch or last-touch attribution models and are unable to account for multi-touch complexities.
- They often also fail to capture broader insights into what drives the initial conversions.
Given the challenges of the current toolkit, it’s time for a major paradigm shift. The marketing industry has been plagued by ignorance, silos and outdated habits for too long.
Agencies avoid tough attribution discussions, teams are forced to compete for budget instead of collaborating and critical data remains fragmented.
But in today’s world of tight budgets and scrutiny, this has to change. True growth demands a flexible, holistic approach to measurement and strategy.
This is a call to arms: let’s turn fractured data into actionable intelligence that drives collaboration, innovation and real results.
The new paradigm makes attribution intuitive
Perhaps my greatest frustration has been that there was always another way.
If I had retainer time, I could manually pull cross-channel data.
If I had access to a data hub like Funnel, I could easily aggregate all that marketing data for analysis in one central place.
If I had access to a data science team, something overarching like marketing mix modeling (MMM) would be more accessible.
And with a data science team and an MMM SaaS product I don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for, the sky would be my limit.
No more “ifs”
This is why Funnel integrated MMM, multi-touch attribution (MTA) and incrementality testing into our already powerful marketing Data Hub.
We know you’ll keep using ad platforms, web and app analytics and customer engagement tools (they’re some of our most popular connectors). But when you’re juggling cross-channel budgets, multiple teams and stakeholders and trying to optimize for incrementality, you need a fully integrated solution that works.
It’s time to cut through the usual challenges and biases and get insights that help you plan smarter and test bolder. And when you do? Your platform better make sure those hard-earned improvements stick and don’t vanish into the void of cross-team bureaucracy.
You need automated aggregation, reporting, measurement and exporting — all in one place — because anything less just won’t cut it.
If marketing insanity is repeating the same tactics and expecting different results, then marketing sanity must involve automating the process with reliable tools to drive smarter, more consistent outcomes.
It’s time to think differently with Funnel and play a gambit — a chess opening move in which a player risks one or more pawns. It’s giving up your current attribution mindset to gain an advantage in position.
You need insights that will allow you to confidently drop old habits, even if it may be contentious because your competitors haven’t. That’s the advantage you need for a marketing checkmate.
Introducing UMM: your checkmate move
Funnel’s checkmate is called ‘unified marketing measurement’ (or UMM). It utilizes advanced “triangulation”, which is a more meaningful approach to marketing measurement.
By integrating marketing mix modeling (MMM), multi-touch attribution (MTA) and incrementality testing, Funnel delivers robust, cross-validated insights.
It leverages each methodology's strengths while simultaneously mitigating the disadvantages: meaning you can leverage each channel’s strengths while mitigating their disadvantages.
As with any attribution tool, you can’t attain absolutes, of course. But it minimizes biases, reduces over-reliance on any single methodology and provides a comprehensive view of your marketing efforts.
Funnel helps you gain more visibility into what’s driving value.
Importantly, it should allow you and your marketing teams to more effectively collaborate to reach a common goal: creating real value that moves the needle on business growth.
Marketing measurement triangulation isn’t your fairy godmother — it’s your sparring partner. Advanced measurement is a proxy for testing, a platform for driving confident change and yes, you should argue with it.
To do that effectively, tools like MMM or UMM need to be accessible and transparent, sparking discussions across every channel team. Insights should excite, not intimidate. They’re fuel for innovation, and it’s on managers, directors and CMOs to harness them.
UMM might tell you a channel is overvalued, even when the specialist running it did exceptional work with the data they had. That’s not a critique; it’s an opportunity. These moments aren’t about blame or “I told you so.” Every insight, whether it aligns with expectations or not, is a positive step forward — a new baseline for testing, creativity and smarter decisions.
Unbiased, all-encompassing analysis like UMM should be seen as the antidote to the blind spots of traditional tools, helping you navigate the challenges they’ve long ignored. It builds trust with stakeholders, offering clarity on even the most complex statistical insights in a way that fuels confidence and action.
UMM is here to guide the conversation and sharpen decision-making. But here’s the catch: you have to buy into what measurement really is. It’s not an objective fact. It’s a holistic lens to evaluate media success and shape the future.
And no, marketing teams shouldn’t lean too heavily on UMM or advanced metrics. The time spent debating performance — good or bad — shouldn’t outweigh the energy spent chasing new opportunities.
Ultimately, UMM’s legacy should be this: it convinces the cynics, sells the necessity of change and delivers the forward-thinking insights marketers need to outsmart their competition.
Future-forward insights for data-informed decisions
Marketing attribution will always be a proxy to juggle, a boat on choppy seas, but at least with Funnel the sails are up and we’re going in the right direction.
Triangulation and unified marketing measurement provide a powerful framework for understanding and optimizing your marketing efforts.
By leveraging the strengths of MTA, MMM and incrementality testing and making sure you have seamless data integration and automation, you can achieve a holistic and more accurate view of your marketing performance so you can turn the naysayers into your raving fans.