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Multi-Touch Attribution Analysis

A side-by-side comparison of four attribution models across $4.2M in closed-won revenue, plus the budget reallocation recommendation the CFO actually signed off on. Built to settle the perennial Sales-vs-Marketing argument about credit.

The problem

Marketing was running first-touch and crediting paid social with 35% of revenue. Sales was running last-touch and crediting outbound with 60%. The CFO was sitting between them with a $1.8M marketing budget asking which channels to fund next quarter, and getting two different answers depending on who was at the table.

The approach

Pull a clean 12-month closed-won dataset with every touchpoint timestamped — paid, organic, outbound, events, content. Run all four standard models against the same data: first-touch, last-touch, linear, and W-shaped (with weight at first-touch, opportunity-creation, and closed-won). Show the contribution per channel under each model, side by side. Layer in cost data to compute channel ROI and CAC, not just attributed revenue.

The outcome

• A single chart the CFO, CMO, and CRO could all agree on — even if they each preferred a different model.
• Budget reallocation recommendation that defunded two underperforming paid channels and shifted ~22% of the marketing budget into content and events, where the W-shaped model showed the strongest mid-funnel lift.
• A clear answer to "are we overspending on attribution-credited channels with poor CAC" — yes, in two cases, and the data justified pulling back.
• Subsequent quarter's closed-won revenue tracked the reallocation with measurable lift in pipeline-to-close conversion.

What I would do differently

Bring Marketing into the model selection early. Marketing teams have a legitimate preference for first-touch because it values their top-of-funnel work, and dismissing that preference as bias misses the point. The right answer is multi-model attribution as a standing report, not picking one model and forcing everyone to use it.