Find the answers to commonly asked questions about Source Medium Multi-Touch Attribution
Where does Source Medium MTA data come from?
Source Medium MTA takes multiple data sources reporting many customer journeys, unifies them into a single schema and assesses their quality, then combines the best of those purchase journeys with Marketing Data, Orders Data, Customer Data, and User Inputs to create a Unified Purchase Journey Dataset. View this process in the figure below.
What is Attributable Revenue? What are Attributable Purchases?
What is the difference between a Touch Point and a Distinct Dimension Value?
A touch point occurs any time a customer interacts with a Marketing Channel, Ad Creative, or Landing Page during a purchase journey. Touch points are tracked by the time the event occurred, and the interaction that took place. The dimension value of a touch point is the specific Marketing Channel, Ad Creative, or Landing Page that the customer interacted with at that touch point. The Distinct Dimension Values then, of a purchase journey, is the collection of unique Marketing Channels, Ad Creatives, or Landing Pages that a customer interacted with throughout their purchase journey—no dimension value is counted more than once even if a customer interacted with it multiple times.
What is a Purchase Journey?
What is Multi-Touch Attribution?
Multi-Touch Attribution is a type of marketing data model which accounts for the many marketing interactions each customer has with your business before a purchase, rather than only accounting for a single interaction as many typical marketing models do.
Marketing interactions happen with customers in the form of touch points—many touch points make up a purchase journey, and many purchase journeys make up a multi-touch attribution data set. Click the tabs below to read more about each of these concepts.
How do I use Source Medium MTA built-in reporting?
Source Medium MTA Built-in Reports are part of a standalone dashboard separate from your main Source Medium dash. After MTA is enabled for your account, the dashboard link will be pinned to your shared Slack channel or sent via email/gchat if you do not use Slack.
What are the three attribution types within Source Medium MTA?
Why doesn't Email/SMS receive first touch or linear attribution?
Email and SMS channels are excluded from first touch and linear attribution for several important reasons:
Existing Relationship Required: By definition, Email and SMS require a customer to have already interacted with your brand (to provide their contact information), so they’re rarely the true “first touch” in a customer’s journey.
Marketing Budget Allocation: Including Email/SMS in all attribution models can lead to undervaluing true acquisition channels, causing misallocation of marketing budgets.
Frequent Touches: Email and SMS often have multiple touches in a journey, which can disproportionately influence linear attribution.
Instead, Source Medium provides a dedicated Email/SMS dimension that allows you to analyze the impact of these channels separately, while maintaining more accurate attribution for acquisition channels.
Why do brand campaigns receive zero attribution?
Brand campaigns receive zero attribution credit in Source Medium’s MTA system because:
Incremental Value: Brand campaigns typically target users who would have found you anyway (searching specifically for your brand name).
Last-Click Bias: In traditional models, brand campaigns often receive disproportionate credit simply because they occur late in the purchase journey.
Marketing Budget Optimization: Attributing conversions to brand campaigns can lead to overinvestment in non-incremental marketing and underinvestment in true acquisition channels.
However, brand campaign metrics (spend, impressions, clicks) are still fully visible in the system. This approach gives you complete transparency into your marketing activities while preventing attribution bias.
What is the difference between ad-level and channel-level data?
Source Medium’s MTA system organizes marketing data at two distinct levels:
Ad-Level Data:
ad_id
valuesChannel-Level Data:
sm_marketing_channel
(e.g., Facebook, Google)This dual approach ensures you have both granular ad-level insights and complete channel-level spend accountability.
What is the dedicated Email/SMS dimension?
The Email/SMS dimension is a specialized attribution dimension specifically designed for tracking and analyzing the impact of email and SMS messages on purchase journeys.
Key features include:
This dedicated dimension allows you to analyze email and SMS performance in detail, even while these channels are excluded from first touch and linear attribution in the marketing channel dimension.
How can I improve my attribution rate?
To improve your attribution rate (the percentage of purchases with attributable touchpoints), consider these approaches:
Implement Proper UTM Parameters:
Connect Additional Data Sources:
Optimize Tracking Setup:
Review Attribution Windows:
Can I customize attribution rules for my business?
Yes, Source Medium can implement custom attribution rules tailored to your business model. Common customizations include:
Email/SMS Attribution Rules:
Brand Campaign Configuration:
Attribution Windows:
Custom Dimensions:
To discuss custom attribution configurations, contact your SourceMedium account manager.
How do I analyze unattributed spend?
Unattributed spend represents marketing activities that cannot be tied to specific ads but still contributes to overall marketing costs. To analyze this spend:
Identify Channel-Level Rows:
sm_marketing_channel
is present but ad_id
is NULLRun Analysis Queries:
Calculate Unattributed Percentage: