Why Building Your Own Marketing Attribution is a Road to Trouble

"Can't we just build marketing attribution ourselves?" We have watched several companies go down this road over 15 years. And it usually starts well. Until it doesn't, typically 12 to 18 months in, because...

1. The model isn't a thing you build and deploy. Customer journeys shift, platform APIs change without notice. The model doesn't break, it drifts. Slowly, silently, it gets less right every week, and nobody notices until the numbers stop making sense.
2. Privacy compliance is a full-time job that never ends. GDPR, consent, cookieless, Data Clean Rooms, iOS, Walled Garden APIs. Each one needs legal review and methodology updates.
3. If your in-house tool is calibrated against Google- and Meta-reported conversions, you haven't removed platform bias. You have internalized it.

And yes, we are aware of the elephant in the room: we are an attribution and marketing measurement company. We have an obvious commercial interest in you not building your own solution. Factor that in. What we would ask in return: factor in your own biases too.

If you're currently having this conversation internally, this blog post is for you:

#marketing attribution #data compliance #marketing measurement #marketing analytics #attribution challenges