Attribution

Data → Data Preferences → Attribution: the sources, tracking parameters, lookback window and results of multi-touch attribution for your workspace.

Attribution gives credit for each conversion to the marketing touchpoints that came before it. Vendo builds the touchpoints from your event data. Then it calculates six attribution models in one run and writes the result to your warehouse.

Where attribution lives in Vendo

How Vendo builds touchpoints

Each source that you add to the Attribution page has one Touchpoint role.

Ad platform sources do not contain user-level data. Thus you cannot add an ad click as a touchpoint. Vendo reads the click IDs and UTM parameters on your session events instead.

Sessions

A new attribution session starts after 30 minutes with no events from the same user and source. Vendo keeps the first value of each tracking parameter in the session.

The Sessions page in Data Preferences has a Session timeout (minutes) setting and an Excluded events list. The attribution engine does not read these settings. Attribution sessions always use the 30-minute gap.

Channel and platform

For each touchpoint, Vendo sets a platform in this order:

1. An engagement touchpoint gets the Channel of its source.
2. A session with a click ID gets the platform of that click ID.
3. A session with a utm_source value gets that value as its platform.

A session with no click ID and no utm_source value does not get credit. A touchpoint gets credit only when it occurs inside the lookback window before the conversion.

Click IDs

Vendo reads these click parameters. The labels are the labels on the Configuration tab.

You can also add a custom click parameter. Vendo uses its name as the platform name.

UTM parameters

Vendo can read utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content, utm_id, utm_source_platform, utm_creative_format, utm_marketing_tactic and utm_creative. The results use utm_campaign as the campaign and utm_source as the source.

Settings on the Attribution page

The page header has a status list and the Run Attribution button. The status list has 2 values: Active and Paused. The page has 3 tabs: Configuration, Field Mapping and Results.

Configuration tab

These settings apply to all sources. Click Save Configuration to save them.

A custom click parameter name must start with a letter. It can contain only letters, digits and underscores.

Field Mapping tab

Click Add source to add a source. The menu shows your connected sources, Custom table and Connect a new source…. You can add up to 10 sources.

Each source card has these fields:

For some connected sources, Vendo fills the mappings when you select the role. The card then shows Auto-mapped. Click Customize to change the columns.

On a session source, Auto-match fills each empty tracking parameter. It uses a column with the same name. If no column matches and the table has a properties column, it uses properties.<parameter>.

Click Save sources to save the sources. You cannot save without exactly 1 conversion source.

Results tab

The Results tab shows these items:

When you select a lookback, Vendo calculates the results again for that lookback. If the live results are not available, the tab shows the results of the last run.

When attribution runs

When the status is Active, Vendo runs attribution one time each day. When the status is Paused, Vendo skips the run.

To start a run now, click Run Attribution. The message that shows has a View run link to the run in Activity Logs.

A run fails if a source table is not found. It also fails if a source table had no new data for more than 7 days.

Where attribution results go

• Results tab: the summary and the platform table on the Attribution page.
• Warehouse: Vendo writes the results to the attribution_summary table in your dataset. You can query it in the SQL Editor.
• Ad platforms: conversion destinations send the credited conversions to the ad platform.
• Measurement: the click path signal in Measurement and Budget reads the attribution results. The Agent and the MCP server can read unified attribution through the measurement_unified_attribution tool.

Attribution on conversion destinations

The conversion destinations for Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, Snap Ads, Microsoft Ads, Pinterest Ads, LinkedIn Ads and X Ads have an Attribution section.

The credit comes from the attribution run, which uses the Lookback Window on the Attribution page. Participation gives full credit to each touchpoint, so the ad platform can get more than 1 conversion for each purchase.

The Axon Ads destination has its own Attribution Model and Lookback Window (hours) fields. Vendo sends these values to Axon.

For the steps on each platform, see the export conversions pages for Google Ads, Meta Ads, Microsoft Ads, TikTok Ads and Snap Ads.

Channel Grouping

Data → Data Preferences → Channel Grouping lists your grouping models. When you first open the page, Vendo creates the Default Channel Grouping model. It has channels such as Google Ads, Organic Search, Email, Referral and Direct.

Attribution does not use Channel Grouping. The platform in the attribution results comes from click IDs, utm_source and the engagement channel. For more information about grouping models, see Grouping Rules.

Set up attribution

Before you start, connect a source with page view events and a source with conversion events.

1. Go to Data → Data Preferences → Attribution.
2. Click the Field Mapping tab.
3. Click Add source.
4. Select the source that has your page view events.
5. In Touchpoint role, select Sessions.
6. In Attribution events, add your page view and screen view events.
7. If the card does not show Auto-mapped, select the User identifier, Event name field and Event timestamp field columns.
8. In Tracking parameters (UTM + Click IDs), click Auto-match.
9. Make sure that each click parameter you use has a column.
10. Click Add source, then select the source that has your conversion events.
11. In Touchpoint role, select Conversions.
12. In Conversion events, add the events that count as conversions.
13. If the conversion has a value, select the Conversion value property (optional).
14. Click Save sources.
15. Click the Configuration tab.
16. Set the Lookback Window and the other settings.
17. Click Save Configuration.
18. In the status list, select Active.
19. Click Run Attribution.
20. When the run completes, click the Results tab.

Troubleshooting

Related

• Attribution Models
• Grouping Rules
• Export conversions to Google Ads
• Export conversions to Meta Ads
• Shopify Attribution
• Web Tracking
• Tracking SDK
• Activity Logs
• SQL Editor
• Measurement and Budget
• MCP server