Attribution limits, incrementality and budget allocation

Skills you'll practise

• Explain why attribution assigns credit but doesn't show what would have happened without the ad
• Explain why conversions reported by separate ad platforms add up to more than actual results
• Calculate incremental conversions and incremental cost per acquisition from a holdout test
• Calculate marginal cost per conversion between two spend levels and use it to place the next budget increment
• Write the assumptions and limitations behind a budget recommendation

Course outline

1. 1.Attribution, incrementality and budget at the marginVideo · 2 min
2. 2.What attribution can and can't tell youLesson · 16 min
3. 3.Incrementality: what would have happened anywayLesson · 17 min
4. 4.Allocating budget at the marginLesson · 16 min
5. 5.Attribution limits, incrementality and budget allocation: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 17 questions
6. 6.Retargeting looks brilliant, but is it?Scenario
7. 7.Final exam10 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out

Sources it draws on

The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.

• Google Analytics Help: Get started with attribution (available models; first click, linear, time decay and position-based removed November 2023)
• Kohavi, Tang and Xu: Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
• General marketing and sales practice (starter content; have a subject expert review it)