From Last Click to Contribution

For a long time, last-click attribution has been the marketing model that has felt logical to most teams. The journey has been somewhat straightforward:

• A customer discovers the brand through a touchpoint
• The customer engages across channels (ads, search, email, social, etc.)
• Consideration builds through repeated interactions
• A customer converts
• The final interaction gets the credit

This may seem simple, clean and easy to explain, but it is, however, increasingly inaccurate.

Why Last Click Became Popular

Last-click attribution grew popular largely because of its ease of implementation and its straightforward interpretation. Within analytics platforms, it allows teams to conclude that “this specific channel drove the conversion.” Marketing teams can then optimise campaigns toward visible gains, and budgets can be justified almost instantly. In an environment once defined by shorter customer journeys, this approach worked well enough to deliver results. However, with ongoing advancements, customer behaviour has evolved, making this model increasingly limited in how accurately it reflects decision-making today.

Modern Journeys Are Not Single-Decision Events

We are well aware of the fact that in today’s market, it is rare for a customer to convert after just one interaction.

Now, customers seem to:

• Research anonymously
• Compare across devices
• Engage with content
• Return through different channels
• Convert much later, sometimes offline

The last click can not be sidelined as the deciding factor. It is the final step. It is when you consider it as one that depicts conversions that creates an inaccurate perspective.

Last click thinking has its own price to pay. Every time we give credit to the last click for any further momentum on a customer journey, it has its own repercussions, like the upper-funnel efforts look inefficient, and the educational content appears to be of low value. We understand that experience improvements struggle to prove ROI\ and teams start optimising for what closes, and not what can influence. When it comes to building trust, discounts rank above others, retargeting overshadows discovery, and short-term gains win over long-term value. We have also understood that the analytics model has silently shaped behaviours.

Contribution Reflects How Decisions Are Actually Made

Contribution-based measurement can view the full journey and ask different questions:

• Which touchpoints influenced the outcome?
• How did experiences work together?
• Where did confidence build or break?

Instead of assigning the whole credit to one aspect alone, the contribution recognises that decisions are of a cumulative nature. This approach lets us align analytics with reality. At a time when customers can rarely decide in isolation, they decide through exposure, reassurance, and some reinforcement.

Why Contribution Changes Decision-Making

It is when organisations move beyond the last click that several shifts occur. It is then that the marketing teams stop competing for credits. After the contribution changes things around, the product and experience teams gain visibility.

Content today is evaluated by the influence it creates, not just the conversions it drives. With stronger optimisation in place, the focus shifts from asking, “Which channel converts best?” to “Which combinations of experiences create better outcomes?”, a question that ultimately leads to smarter, more effective decisions.

Contribution Builds Trust in Analytics

One of the biggest issues with last-click models is trust. Every team intuitively has doubts about this model being flawed. But what they actually lack is an alternative.

One very effective one can be a contribution-based analysis, which can rebuild confidence because its findings reflect real-world experiences, not just abstract data or assumptions. A contribution-based analysis can be highly effective in restoring confidence because it aligns closely with lived experience. It explains outcomes rather than oversimplifying them. When analytics reflects how decisions are actually made, teams stop arguing with the data and start acting on it..

Moving Forward

Last-click attribution isn’t flawed simply because it’s outdated; it’s flawed because it assumes customers decide in a single moment. Modern analytics needs to reflect influence across the journey, not just the final closure. Moving from last click to contribution, therefore, isn’t a technical upgrade, it’s a mindset shift, and a necessary one if analytics is to guide real decisions rather than merely report outcomes