How Marketing Attribution Overweights Google Search Clicks

Episode notes

Episode 112 of Marketing Analytics with Fexingo dives into a persistent blind spot in digital attribution: why Google Search gets disproportionate credit for conversions. Lucas and Luna break down a specific case - an e-commerce brand spending $2.4M on paid search, paid social, and email - where a last-click model gave Google 68% of conversion credit, while a controlled holdout test showed its true incremental contribution was 31%. They explore the mechanics of 'search as the final click' bias, how branded search terms inflate attribution, and why the IAB's 2025 multi-touch framework still fails to correct it. The episode covers practical fixes: running geo-holdout experiments, splitting branded vs. non-branded search in your attribution model, and using causal inference methods like synthetic control. No vague theory - just a concrete breakdown of a $1.7M misallocation problem. If you're a marketer relying on platform-reported attribution, this episode will change how you read your dashboards.

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