The goal of every Google Ads campaign is to help your business grow and thrive. There are certainly different stages throughout the funnel that impact that result, but the one most folks are familiar with is a conversion-focused campaign.
Despite having conversion tracking features in place for two decades now, it’s still not a clear-cut science on which portion of your marketing efforts drove the actual conversion.
That’s where attribution models come into play.
We’re going to talk through the two key attribution models Google Ads uses to attribute performance to your campaigns and help you uncover which one is likely right for you.
Contents
- What is an attribution model?
- Why do we need attribution models?
- What attribution models are available in Google Ads?
What is an attribution model?
Simply put, an attribution model is a framework that assigns performance credit to one portion of an account or another.
When a customer makes a purchase on your site, they likely didn’t have an idea, Google it right away, click your ad, and convert immediately. If that’s what happened, we probably wouldn’t need attribution models.
Instead, that person likely had an idea and maybe conducted a search, but they might have clicked on any other link or an organic listing. Then they came to your site, browsed around a little, then left. Maybe they came back to your site three weeks later when they saw a YouTube ad you’re running and made a purchase then.
In that case, should the credit for that conversion go to the first time they clicked your ad on Search? The second time on YouTube? Somewhere in the middle?
That’s what attribution models try to solve.
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Why do we need attribution models?
Without attribution models, it becomes impossible to know which portions of your marketing efforts are driving results and, therefore, impossible to know where to focus.
If you have no idea if your Search campaigns are converting, are you more or less likely to invest further in them? The same question goes for any other marketing channel.
Without clear, understandable, and actionable insights on performance, we marketers simply wouldn’t know where to focus our attention.
What attribution models are available in Google Ads?
If you were to join the paid media industry 15 years ago (when I did), this question would take a lot longer to answer. At that point, there were five different attribution models (all the ones you see in the dropdown below, minus Data-driven, which is now the recommended model).
First click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution models all went the way of the dodo in 2023, so now we’re left with two. Let’s go through each of them.
Last click attribution
Last click attribution was the default for many a moon in the PPC space. In this model, all credit for a conversion is given to the last ad click that was associated with it.
Here’s an example of how last click would work:
As the first touchpoint, someone watches a video on YouTube. Then they conduct a Non-Brand Search, but don’t convert. They then see a second YouTube Video, then a Display Banner Ad, then eventually conduct a Brand Search and convert on that touchpoint.
In this scenario, all of the credit would be given to the Brand Search campaign in this account, which is why the bar in the image above is entirely in the Brand Search column. (As a side note, this is a simplified version considering we’re only looking at the Google Ads account. Bringing in other channels and mediums makes this more complicated, but we’re only talking about Google today.)
| Last click attribution pros | Last click attribution cons |
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Data-driven attribution
Data-driven attribution is Google’s answer to the long-debated attribution question: which model is right for me?
All of the other attribution models that used to be in Google Ads.
Now that you’ve been through the last-click attribution model, you know how to reach each of these. The higher the bar, the more credit is given to that touchpoint in the conversion process.
Depending on your business model, any of these could have been a good fit. But the biggest problem with all of these is that they were inflexible. Once you chose a model, the respective touchpoints in that model would receive the same amount of credit in all transactions.
It’s highly unlikely that all conversion flows are identical for each user, even if they have the same number of touchpoints.
The solution to that was initially launched all the way back in 2013, but made its way to the mainstream in 2020 and became the default attribution model for all new conversion actions in Google Ads in late 2021.
For this model, Google uses AI to analyze all interactions (clicks and video engagements) across Search, YouTube, and Display, assigning credit based on which interactions most influence conversions. This credit is dynamic based on all of the touchpoints a user had across the Google network and weighs them differently based on that user’s past behavior and perceived impact of each touchpoint.
For two different users who take the same path we had above, you might get two completely different attribution credit allocations.
You’ll notice as well that with data-driven attribution, Google can give partial conversion credit to each aspect of the conversion funnel. That means you might have a campaign that has 0.25 conversions. While that might not seem logical at first, it’s important to understand how these fractional shares add up across campaigns to drive tangible business results.
The goal here is to have a more realistic view of how each touchpoint in the funnel influences the conversion and allow you to understand what’s driving performance.
| Data-driven attribution pros | Data-driven attribution cons |
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Find the right attribution model for your Google Ads campaigns
In case you couldn’t tell from this article, it’s highly likely that data-driven attribution is the right model for you. Most businesses are going to benefit from using this model over last click to make sure all portions of the account that contributed to a conversion are getting credit.
If you want more help determining how Google Ads are attributing to your bottom line, reach out to one of our experts.
The post Google Ads Attribution Models Explained: Last Click vs. Data-Driven appeared first on WordStream.
