How attribution works

Attribution is the process of assigning credit to touchpoints along a consumer's conversion path. By better understanding which of your ads should get credit for leading a consumer to take an action you wanted, such as making a purchase, you can better measure the effectiveness of your ads and make decisions for future planning and optimisation.

For example, let's say someone saw your ads while browsing the Facebook app on their mobile phone, on a website they visited while on their work computer and on a search engine while on their home computer. If the last ad that this person clicked on before making their purchase was the ad on the search engine from their home computer, it can be tempting to think that this search engine ad should get all the credit for making the sale happen, even though all of the other ads contributed to building awareness and consideration.

Each of these steps leading up to the conversion are called touchpoints, which include any of a consumer's interactions with an ad. They make up a consumer's conversion path, which may look something like this:

Attribution combines the data from the touchpoints in a consumer's conversion path with the model you choose to apply to this data to understand which touchpoints should get credit for the conversion. Learn more about how touchpoints are determined in Facebook Attribution.

Through measurement solutions such as Facebook Attribution, Facebook uses people-based measurement to help you better understand the steps people take leading up to a conversion after seeing an ad. By leveraging a persistent Facebook login, Facebook allows you to tie actions directly to real people who took those actions, across publishers, channels and devices both on and off Facebook. This approach is different from other measurement tools that may measure ads based only on cookies or device advertising IDs. Cookie- or device-only measurement can lose its effectiveness when used alone to measure people, as they may miss different touchpoints in your conversion paths.

Learn more about how you can use people-based attribution by getting started with Facebook Attribution.

Data needed for attribution

You'll need to make sure that you're collecting both ad and conversion data. Note: If you're already collecting ad and conversion data, you can begin using Facebook Attribution with no additional setup required.

Ad data

You can think of ad data as all of the data about where and how people are engaging with your advertising. This includes data on impressions, clicks and spend. To get the best results, you should look at all touchpoints and collect ad data from all of your campaigns, including the ones you're running on third-party advertising platforms not on Facebook.

If you're already a Facebook advertiser, you'll be able to see ad data, including impressions and clicks, from Facebook's family of apps and services.

If you'd like to track touchpoints off Facebook (e.g search, display or programmatic touchpoints), you can install impression and click tags across all of your digital campaigns to compare your ad performance across publishers, channels and devices. Learn more about adding your third-party advertising platforms to Facebook Attribution to track all of your digital campaigns and get a more complete picture of your conversion paths.

Conversion data

You can set up the Facebook pixel for your website, Facebook SDK for your mobile app or Offline Conversions to collect conversion data:

• Facebook pixel: Add a Facebook pixel to understand the actions people take on your website, including whether they make a purchase.
• Facebook SDK: Install the Facebook SDK and add app events to see how people use your mobile app, including whether they make a purchase.
• Offline Conversions: Set up your offline event set to understand which offline events, such as purchases in your retail shop or orders made over the phone, happened as a result of your Facebook ads.

Once you've started collecting ad and conversion data, you'll be able to analyse the data by applying different attribution models.

Types of attribution models

Attribution models determine how credit is given to touchpoints for a conversion. Different attribution models distribute different amounts of credit for conversions across your ads. Attribution models can be based on a rule or set of rules, or on a statistical model. Rule-based models let you select the rule that will determine how different touchpoints are credited for conversions. Single-touch models allow you to give credit to only one touchpoint, while multi-touch models allow you to give credit to multiple touchpoints in the consumer's conversion path. Statistical models, such as Facebook's data-driven attribution model, look at historical data to determine credit and vary depending on your business.

Facebook Attribution supports several different rule-based and statistical attribution models, each of which you can apply as a lens to analyse your data. Each attribution model will interpret your data differently to give you different perspectives on how your ads are contributing to your sales outcomes.

• Data-driven: A statistical model developed by Facebook that gives a percentage of credit to each touchpoint based on the incremental impact they had on driving business goals.
• Even credit: A rule-based model that gives an equal percentage of the credit for a conversion to each touchpoint on a conversion path.
• Last click or visit: A rule-based model designed only to consider clicks or visits. Gives 100% credit to the last click or visit that happened before a conversion took place.
• Last touch: A rule-based model designed to consider clicks or visits, as well as impressions. Gives 100% credit to the last click or visit that happened before a conversion took place. If there was no click or visit, then it will credit the last impression.
• Positional: A rule-based model that gives a specific percentage of the credit for a conversion to the first and last touchpoints in a conversion path, with the remaining credit distributed evenly across all other touchpoints.
• Time decay: A rule-based model that gives an increasing percentage of the credit for a conversion to touchpoints as they get closer in time to the conversion.

You can compare different attribution models to better understand how your ads may be driving conversions at different points throughout the consumer's conversion path. Over time, you'll become familiar with each model's perspective on which ads may be most impactful for your business, and build intuition on how to optimise your campaigns going forward.

Learn more about attribution models.