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This is the piece that names the exact trap you are in: your ad platforms each claim credit for the same sales, so the numbers add up to more than reality. Kaushik walks through a plain example where 10 conversions get reported but only 3 were actually caused by the marketing, a 70 percent overstatement. It is the clearest starting point for understanding why attribution and incrementality are not the same thing.
Marketing Analytics: Attribution Is Not Incrementality
From Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik About a 15 minute read
- Attribution just splits credit across touchpoints. It never asks whether the sale would have happened anyway, which is the only question that matters.
- A large share of conversions credited to paid search or social would have converted organically, from brand, word of mouth, or existing demand.
- Real incrementality needs an experiment or a proper model, not a prettier attribution dashboard.
