Attribution Models and Click Windows

A customer often clicks several ads before buying: a Meta ad first, a Google ad a week later. The attribution model decides which of those clicks gets the credit for the order, and the click window decides how far back a click still counts. Both change which campaigns look profitable, never your total revenue or profit.

Where

The model picker in the toolbar of Marketing Attribution, the dashboard's ad spend section, the Orders list, and the Ad Spend and Products reports.

Who

Anyone reading campaign results. The default (Last click, no limit) suits most stores.

Updates

At once, for every date range. One choice applies everywhere in Profitario and is remembered on your device.

Try It on a Journey#

The customer below clicked three ads and one email over 39 days, then came back directly and bought for €120. Switch the model and the click window to see how the credit moves. The shaded area is the click window: only ad clicks inside it can earn credit.

Things to notice:

• Only ad clicks earn credit. The email and the direct visit never get a share. Under Last click the Google ad wins, even though the customer came back directly afterwards: Last click means the last ad click, not the last visit.
• The window moves the credit, it does not drop it. With First click and 28d, the Meta click is too old, so the TikTok click becomes the first one and earns the order.
• A window can leave no ad click. With 1d, no ad click is recent enough. The order is then shown in the channel of its last visit (here Direct), and no campaign gets credit.

Why email and direct visits get no credit. The models answer one question: which ad earned this order? Their job is to tell you which campaigns pay back their ad spend, so they share an order only among ad clicks, the visits you paid for and can turn up or down. An email or a direct visit has no campaign and no ad spend behind it, so there is nothing to credit. Giving it a share would also take revenue away from the ads that brought the customer in the first place: here, the customer only knew your store from the Meta, TikTok and Google ads before they opened the email or typed your address.

Email and direct orders are not lost. When an order has no ad click inside the click window, it is credited to the channel of its last visit, so the Email and Direct rows of Marketing Attribution show the orders that came through them without an ad click. See How Orders Are Sorted Into Channels and Matched to Campaigns.

Which Model Answers Your Question#

There is no correct model, only the right one for the question you are asking.

Keep one model as your everyday view (Last click suits most stores) and switch when the question changes. The model only moves credit between channels and campaigns: your orders, revenue and profit stay the same.

Single-Click Models#

Single-click models give the whole order to one ad click.

Last click. The whole order goes to the last ad click before the order. In the example, the Google search ad takes the €120.

• Use when you make day-to-day budget decisions, or your customers buy within a few days.
• Strength: shows the ads that finish sales, and matches how Google Analytics and most store reports count.
• Watch out: over-credits ads people click just before buying (brand search, retargeting) and hides the ads that first brought the customer in.

First click. The whole order goes to the ad click that first brought the customer. In the example, the Meta ad takes the €120.

• Use when you want to see which ads find new customers: prospecting, video, influencer campaigns.
• Strength: surfaces the campaigns that create demand, which Last click undervalues.
• Watch out: ignores everything after the first click, including the ad that closed the sale. Without the Profitario pixel, the first visit comes from Shopify, which removes ad IDs from it, so First click results stop at campaign level.

Shared Model#

Linear. The order is split evenly over every ad click inside the window. In the example, Meta, TikTok and Google get €40 each.

• Use when journeys often have several ad clicks and you want every campaign that took part to show up.
• Strength: no click is over or under-valued, a good neutral baseline.
• Watch out: an ad that did the real work and one that was only along for the ride get the same share.

Each campaign also gets a third of an order in the Orders column, which is why order counts can show decimals. An ad click that could not be matched to one of your campaigns still counts as a click: its share goes to No campaign match instead of being handed to the other campaigns.

Coming Soon#

These three models are listed in the model picker and in the example above as a preview. They cannot be selected in the reports yet.

Last click per platform. Each platform keeps its own last click and claims the full order, the way its ads manager reports. Useful to compare a platform with its own dashboard. Platform totals then add up to more than your real revenue, so read it per platform, never as a store total.

Position based. The first and last ad clicks get 40% each, the clicks in between share the remaining 20%. With two clicks it is 50/50. Credits both the ad that started the journey and the one that closed it. The 40/20/40 split is a rule of thumb, not a measurement.

Time decay. Credit halves for every 7 days between a click and the order, so recent clicks count most. Reflects the closing stretch without ignoring earlier clicks, but undervalues the ads that start journeys.

The Click Window#

The click window is how many days before the order an ad click still counts: 1d, 7d, 14d, 28d or No limit (the default).

A click older than the window is ignored, and the model picks among the clicks that are left. Shorter windows give recent clicks the credit and suit products people buy on impulse. Longer windows suit considered purchases that people think about for weeks.

The visit that led to the purchase itself always falls inside any window. The window mostly matters for earlier visits: the first visit Shopify records and, with the pixel, every visit from the 30 days before the purchase.

The ad platforms also count views (people who saw an ad without clicking). Profitario does not, so even with matching windows the platforms report more. See ROAS, POAS and Platform Numbers in Attribution.

Compare the Models#

To see all models at once, open the model picker on Marketing Attribution and click Compare models side by side. The table shows each campaign's revenue (or ROAS, orders, NC ROAS) under each model, and marks the difference:

• Opener: the campaign earns more than 15% more under First click than under Last click. It starts journeys that other ads finish. Judging it on Last click alone undervalues it.
• Closer: it earns more than 15% less under First click. It finishes journeys that other ads started. Judging it on Last click alone overvalues it.
• Balanced: within 15% either way.

A campaign that is an Opener and has a weak Last click ROAS is often still worth keeping: turning it off can lower the results of the campaigns it feeds.

Where the Model Applies#

The model and window you pick are used on every page that credits orders to campaigns:

• Marketing Attribution: every row and summary card.
• Dashboard: the ROAS card of each ad platform, and spend attributed to filtered orders (see How Ad Spend Is Attributed to Orders).
• Ad Spend report: the Revenue and ROAS columns per platform, account and campaign.
• Orders: the Ad Spend column and the Attribution tab of each order.
• Products report: the paid revenue and paid share columns, and the channel mix of a product.

The Channel column of the Orders list always shows the order's last visit, whatever the model.

Common questions