# Attribution

> The rule that decides which marketing touch gets credit for a sale, signup or other conversion.

Source: https://datacenter.so/glossary/attribution
Also called: marketing attribution, conversion attribution.

A buyer often meets a brand several times before buying: an ad, a search, an email, a link from a friend. Attribution is the rule that turns that path into credit, so you can say which channel or campaign earned the sale.

Every attribution result has three parts:

- **The touches a tool can see.** A tool only credits what it recorded. A Meta ad that was viewed on a phone, then a purchase on a laptop, is invisible to a tool that cannot link the two devices.
- **The model.** First touch gives all the credit to the first known touch, last click to the last one, and multi-touch models split it.
- **The window.** How far back a touch can be and still get credit, such as 7 days after a click.

Because each tool sees different touches and uses its own model and window, two honest tools give two different answers for the same sale. The [attribution models guide](https://datacenter.so/guides/attribution-models-explained) works through one buyer's path under each rule.

In Datacenter, the attribution report shows conversions and revenue by source, campaign, ad platform and short link, under the site's attribution model: last touch by default, or first touch, linear, position based, time decay or any touch.

## Related terms

- https://datacenter.so/glossary/first-touch-attribution
- https://datacenter.so/glossary/last-touch-attribution
- https://datacenter.so/glossary/data-driven-attribution
- https://datacenter.so/glossary/attribution-window