Why Attribution is Overrated — and Incrementality is What Actually Moves the Needle
Every founder or marketer has been there.
You launch campaigns, check the ROAS, tweak the targeting, look at CAC by cohort…
And yet, you’re still wondering:
“Which channel is actually working?”
Let’s face it: attribution might make you feel in control, but most of the time, it’s just giving you a false sense of clarity.
Here’s the truth:
Attribution tells you who got credit.
Incrementality tells you who actually drove the sale.
And when you’re selling across D2C, Amazon, and retail — attribution breaks by default.
Because the customer journey isn’t linear anymore.
They might see an Instagram ad, search your name a few days later, then buy from a retail store or Amazon. Your dashboard shows nothing. But your marketing did the job.
So if you’re blindly following attribution data, you might end up killing the exact campaigns that are building your brand.
The Real Problem: The Funnel is Dark
Most of the modern buyer journey lives in what marketers now call the “dark funnel” — the parts of the path to purchase that no tool can fully track.
Think:
- A friend recommends your brand on WhatsApp
- Someone sees your reel, forgets, then buys after spotting it in a store
- They watch a YouTube review, search later, and purchase on Amazon
Your ad tools won’t capture any of this. But these touchpoints are real. And they influence buying decisions more than any bottom-funnel retargeting ad ever could.
So What Should You Measure Instead?
Incrementality.
The north star question becomes:
“Is my marketing creating new demand, or just converting people who were already going to buy?”
And no — you don’t need a big fancy Marketing Mix Model (MMM) to answer this. You just need smarter, more practical ways to look for signals.
Here are four that work beautifully:
1. Geo Split Testing (Still the most underrated tactic)
Pick two similar regions. Run ads in one. Do nothing in the other.
Let’s say you run Meta + YouTube in Gujarat, and keep Maharashtra as a control.
Now track:
- Branded search growth
- Amazon sell-through velocity
- Retail orders and repeat billing
If Gujarat starts growing faster than Maharashtra, you know the campaign worked — attribution or not.
No fancy dashboards needed. Just clean execution.
2. New Buyers vs Returning Buyers
You might see steady numbers month over month. ROAS looks the same. CAC looks the same.
But dig deeper:
How many of those sales came from first-time buyers?
Returning customers don’t count — they come back thanks to brand affinity, CRM, word of mouth.
But if new buyers are growing, that’s your signal that marketing is truly creating demand.
3. Paid vs Organic Movement
Here’s a great directional signal:
If you increase paid spend, what happens to your organic traffic and search volume?
If they don’t move — red flag.
You might just be converting people who were already considering you.
But if you start seeing:
- More branded search
- More organic orders
- Higher rankings or category presence
Then your paid campaigns are working harder than you think — even if attribution doesn’t show it.
4. Offline Signal Mapping (This is what separates brands from performance-only shops)
A lot of brands give up here:
“My Meta ads don’t show up in conversions — but I know people are seeing them before buying offline.”
So how do you prove it?
You can start simple:
Ask buyers how they first heard of you in post-purchase surveys.
But if you want to go deeper — like Atomberg does — connect the dots using installation or warranty data.
When a customer registers their product after purchase, pass that back into Meta or your CRM. If they saw or clicked an ad before, even if they bought offline, you can now map influence.
This is gold for high-ticket or considered purchase categories, where buying happens days or even weeks after discovery.
Final Word: Chase Directional Truth, Not Perfect Dashboards
If you’re an omnichannel brand, you’ll never have perfect attribution. That’s okay.
What matters is understanding whether your marketing is actually moving the business forward — even if the pixel doesn’t say so.
Don’t optimize for what’s easiest to measure.
Optimize for what’s actually working.
Chasing the truth might not get you awards.
But it’ll save you crores — and that’s what counts.
Want help setting up a framework like this for your brand? I can walk you through building your own geo-test, buyer segmentation, or organic/paid movement tracker — no data science team needed.
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