Glossary

Explore Meshline

Products Pricing Blog Support Log In

Ready to map the first workflow?

Book a Demo

Glossary / Evaluation and implementation guide

Multi-Touch Attribution

Multi-touch attribution (MTA) distributes conversion credit across several touchpoints in the buyer journey instead of assigning it all to one interaction.

Common schemes include linear, time-decay, and U-shaped models, each weighting first touch, middle touches, and last touch differently. MTA depends on identity resolution: the system must recognize that the same person touched multiple channels.

A practical example

Example: under a U-shaped model, a deal's credit splits between the first webinar registration and the demo request, with the three emails in between sharing the remainder.

What to evaluate before investing

  • Ask which identity resolution method the vendor uses to stitch anonymous and known sessions, and where it breaks down.
  • Confirm you can run several attribution models side by side on the same data, since model choice is a judgment call.
  • Check whether touchpoint data can be exported, so your analysts can audit the credit distribution independently.

Limitations and tradeoffs

MTA undercounts channels that are hard to track, such as word of mouth, dark social, and privacy-restricted browsers, which can systematically skew budget decisions.

Plan your next step with MeshLine

Connect this decision to your automation, organic marketing and customer lifecycle management. In a MeshLine demo, discuss your existing tools, the scope you need and how to measure the result.