What is Attribution?

Attribution is the process of determining which advertising touchpoint (click, impression, channel) is credited for a user’s goal action: lead, install, deposit, purchase. In arbitrage, attribution links ad spend to offer revenue and decides which campaign is “counted” in the tracker and CPA network stats.

Without reliable attribution, ROI calculation, bid optimization, and traffic-quality disputes with advertisers are impossible. Technically, attribution relies on click IDs, cookies, device IDs, postback URLs, and credit rules (last click, first click, post-view).

Layers of attribution

Ad platform — Meta, Google, TikTok credit conversions to their campaigns using their windows and models.
Tracker — records the tracking URL click and matches an incoming postback to that click row.
CPA network / advertiser — finally approves or rejects the conversion; last click within the network is common.

Attribution window

The attribution window is the time after a click (or view) during which a conversion is credited to the source. Mobile often uses 1–7 days for clicks and up to 24 hours for view-through; nutra and finance may use 30–90 days. Different windows on the platform vs. the network cause report mismatches — expected when reconciling.

Issues and fraud

Click injection, cookie stuffing, and sub ID tampering skew attribution toward fraudulent sources. Networks and MMPs apply antifraud, fingerprinting, and lead validation. Privacy shifts (ATT, third-party cookie deprecation) push the industry toward aggregated and probabilistic attribution (SKAdNetwork, modeled conversions).