Attribution Modeling in Google Analytics 4

As a digital marketer, it is very significant to understand your users and how they behave while interacting with your products on your website/shop. Behind every purchase is a user journey. A user journey that highlights not only the strongest touchpoints that leads to purchase but also the weak links that make a user withdraw.

Attribution is giving credit to the performing corners and factors along a user's path to conversion and attribution modeling is a set of rules for providing those credits.

In GA4, we have three models available - cross-channel rules-based models, an Ads-preferred rules-based model, and data-driven attribution.

Data-driven attribution

This attribution model uses machine learning algorithms and develops conversion rate models. It assesses how likely it is for a user to convert at a marketing touchpoint, given exposure to an ad interaction. It assigns that particular point credit based on how the presence of it changes the probability of estimated conversion.

Cross-channel rules-based models

Credit for conversion is given to -

1. Points that were interacted closely in time before conversion: Cross-channel time decay
2. First and Last points clicked(40% each) and 20% distributed evenly among middle touchpoints: Cross-channel position-based
3. Equally across all channels: Cross-channel linear
4. the First channel clicked by the user: Cross-channel first click
5. the Last channel clicked by the user: Cross-channel last click

Ads-preferred model

Ads-preferred last click: In this model, 100% attribution is given to the last clicked(engaged) Google Ads channel. If the Google Ads channel is not present in the user journey, the attribution model falls back to the Cross-channel last click.

To read in detail on Attribution and Attribution Modeling in GA4, you can refer to this guide by Google.

Manage and configure Attribution

You can select any of the above-stated attribution models in Attribution Settings.

Changing the attribution model will apply to both historical and future data.

The changes will be reflected in all reports that use?event-scoped traffic dimensions?(for example,?Source,?Medium,?Campaign, and?Default channel grouping). Impacted reports include the Conversions details reports and Explorations. In Explorations, you can see a full list of dimensions that are compatible with attribution.?

You'll notice changes to the following metrics when used with event-scoped traffic dimensions:?Conversions,?Total revenue,?Purchase revenue, and?Total ad revenue.?

You can more details of this GA4 feature in this article by Google.