Hey 👋 — hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving break!

With the holiday buzz behind us, it’s time to refocus on a challenge that’s always top of mind for influencer marketers: proving ROI.

You already know how crucial attribution is for measuring and understanding your campaign’s true impact. However, selecting the right attribution model requires careful consideration — aligning your choice with specific campaign objectives and influencer roles.

This week’s newsletter offers a quick guide to selecting the right attribution model so you can prove ROI more effectively, make smarter data-driven decisions, and secure bigger budgets down the line.

Let’s dive in.

5 key attribution models: A closer look

Many influencer marketers begin with last-click and first-click attribution due to their ease of implementation. However, these models often fail to capture the complexities of today's multi-touch customer journeys and may significantly underestimate the true impact of influencer marketing. To accurately measure ROI and optimize performance, it's important to understand the limitations of these basic models and explore more nuanced approaches.

1. Last-Click Attribution: This assigns 100% of the credit to the final touchpoint before a conversion. While simple and suitable for direct-response campaigns with clear calls to action (e.g., discount codes), it severely undervalues the brand awareness and consideration built by influencers earlier in the customer journey. Last-click attribution is a good starting point, but its limitations significantly underestimate the impact of early brand-building touchpoints and, therefore, isn’t recommended for nuanced analysis.

2. First-Click Attribution: Conversely, this model attributes 100% of the credit to the initial touchpoint. It's beneficial for measuring an influencer’s role in driving initial awareness and bringing potential customers into the sales funnel. However, first-click overlooks subsequent touchpoints that might have significantly influenced the final conversion. This model is best suited for assessing top-of-funnel impact.

3. Linear Attribution: This model distributes credit evenly across all touchpoints. While offering a balanced overview—particularly useful for multi-influencer campaigns—it might mask the true influence of specific influencers or key moments in the customer journey. Linear attribution provides a reasonable overview but may not reveal critical insights needed for optimization.

4. Time-Decay Attribution: This model acknowledges all touchpoints but assigns greater weight to those closer to the conversion. It more accurately reflects how recent interactions often sway purchasing decisions and is particularly useful for multi-touch campaigns. However, determining the appropriate decay rate requires careful consideration and may vary based on the length of the customer journey.

5. Position-Based (U-Shaped) Attribution: This sophisticated model prioritizes the first and last touchpoints, recognizing their crucial roles in initiating interest and securing conversion while proportionately crediting intermediate interactions. It provides a comprehensive view of the influencer’s contribution across the entire customer journey and proves invaluable when evaluating long-term impact. However, it does require a robust multi-touch attribution setup.

Choosing the right attribution model

Now that we’ve explored the nuances of each model, let’s talk strategy. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to attribution; selecting the optimal model is an important decision that directly impacts your ability to optimize your influencer marketing strategy and demonstrate ROI to stakeholders. The choice hinges on your campaign objectives and influencers’ role in the customer journey.

Awareness campaigns

For awareness campaigns, accurately measuring the impact of influencer content on brand perception and driving initial engagement is critical. First-click or position-based attribution models are best suited for this objective, effectively highlighting the role of influencers in building brand consideration and awareness and driving initial interest.

• First-Click Attribution: This model is straightforward, crediting a customer’s first interaction with your brand to a single touchpoint. For awareness campaigns leveraging influencers, this highlights their effectiveness in driving initial engagement and bringing potential customers into the sales funnel. It’s a strong choice for measuring the reach and impact of influencer content on brand perception and consideration.

• Position-Based (U-Shaped) Attribution: This sophisticated model gives significant weight to the first and last touchpoints. While acknowledging the final conversion, it appropriately credits the initial influencer interaction for initiating the customer journey, demonstrating their role in sparking interest, even if the purchase happens later.

Why avoid other models? Last-click attribution is unsuitable; it completely overlooks the crucial role of the influencer in creating initial awareness and interest. Linear attribution might dilute the importance of the first interaction, minimizing the influencer’s impact in initiating the customer journey. Time-decay might undervalue the first touchpoint, which is crucial for awareness campaigns.

Performance campaigns

When driving immediate sales or conversions is paramount, last-click or time-decay models will give you the clearest picture of which touchpoints directly lead to purchases or other key conversions.

• Last-Click Attribution: This simple model assigns 100% of the credit to the final customer interaction before a conversion. It’sIt’s ideal for performance-driven campaigns using clear calls to action (like discount codes or affiliate links directly linked to influencer content). This provides a direct link between influencer activity and sales.

• Time-Decay Attribution: While acknowledging all touchpoints, this model gives increasing weight to those closer to the conversion. This mirrors how recent interactions often hold more sway in a customer’s final decision. It’s particularly useful for multi-touch campaigns involving multiple influencers or channels, accurately reflecting the influence of various touchpoints while prioritizing those leading directly to the sale.

Why avoid other models? First-click attribution minimizes the importance of the final conversion, which is the primary focus of performance campaigns. Linear and position-based models, while providing a broader view, may dilute the impact of the final touchpoint, making it harder to determine which channels were most directly responsible for driving conversions.

Full-funnel campaigns

For a complete understanding of the influencer's impact across the entire customer journey, linear or custom models are necessary to capture the cumulative effect of various touchpoints.

• Linear Attribution: This model evenly distributes credit across all touchpoints. It offers a balanced representation of the influencer’s contribution throughout the customer journey, showcasing their impact on awareness, consideration, and conversion. This is invaluable when assessing long-term value and the overall contribution of influencers to brand growth.

• Custom Attribution Models: Custom models allow you to weigh touchpoints based on your specific business goals and customer journey understanding for complex campaigns or unique marketing situations. This requires advanced analytics, but it offers the most tailored and accurate reflection of each influencer’s contribution, enabling fine-tuned optimization.

Why avoid other models? Last-click or first-click models would present an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the influencer’s contribution by ignoring the multiple touchpoints involved in the customer’s complete journey. While acknowledging multiple touchpoints, time-decay attribution might not fully capture the influence of early-stage brand-building activities, which are crucial for full-funnel success.

—

That’s a wrap!

Next week’s newsletter gets practical, providing detailed steps for implementing last-click and first-click attribution within Google Analytics—two models readily accessible to most marketers. See you then ✌️

Find influencers and automate your outreach

Tired of endlessly scrolling social media to find the right influencers? Sick of copying and pasting contact information between platforms? Wish you could personalize outreach messages to multiple influencers at once?

The Superstar Chrome extension helps you discover, analyze, and connect with influencers across all major social media platforms — saving you hours of work and supporting your vetting process.

Unlock powerful data insights: Go beyond basic follower counts. Get instant access to key metrics and deeper insights on audience demographics, content performance, and growth trends—all within your browser.

Discover influencers across platforms: No need to jump between Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Find the perfect creators, no matter where they're active, with our cross-platform discovery tool.

Streamline your outreach: Say goodbye to tedious copy-and-paste. Superstar's extension lets you send personalized messages to influencers directly, right from their social media profiles.

Seamless Superstar integration: Build custom lists and launch campaigns instantly. Add your favorite creators to Superstar and manage all your collaborations from our powerful platform. We're excited to help you take your influencer campaigns to the next level and we look forward to working with the community to make Superstar even better.

Here’s how you can get started with Superstar

Download the Chrome Extension: Instantly unlock influencer insights, streamline your outreach, and discover the perfect creators for your brand.

Explore the platform: Sign up for a free trial and get started with managing your creators.

Get our special offer: Join our exclusive community

For a limited time, Product Hunt + Creator Marketing Community members will get a 15% discount on our paid plan. All you need to do is be accepted to the LinkedIn community, leave a comment on PH, and schedule a call with one of the founders.

Schedule a demo: Click here

Industry insights

TikTok quietly tests product links in posts as it looks to boost its reputation for shopping

TikTok is testing a new feature allowing creators to add product links directly to posts from affiliate networks like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. This shift away from link-in-bio tools could challenge TikTok Shop but strengthens the platform’s appeal as a shopping destination. Read more here

AI influencers can now rep your brand. Should they?

Virtual influencers are on the rise as brands explore AI-driven characters for greater creative control, faster output, and lower costs. Yet, they’re not without risks—from unconvincing pitches to unsettling consumers. Adweek shares four key questions to consider before incorporating an AI avatar into your next marketing campaign. Read more here

Is a brand invasion coming for BlueSky? Not exactly

As Elon Musk continues to reshape X, users are ditching their accounts and finding solace in the seemingly more pleasant feeds of Bluesky. The bad news is that the new social network won’t accommodate brands hoping to connect with audiences or make a viral splash — at least not anytime soon. Read more here

How brands can navigate the murky world of online streaming

Streamers, known for live-streamed gaming or comedy content, are building huge followings among Gen Alpha and Gen Z. However, with their volatile content sometimes resulting in scandal, it’s risky business for brands. Read more here

Join an exclusive community of leading influencer marketers

Our newsletter keeps you informed, and our community keeps you connected. I highly encourage you to join our professional network on LinkedIn.

Join the Creator Marketing Community 

Connect with influencer marketing leaders and professionals from top brands like Nike, Kate Spade, Klarna, Niantic, Red Bull, and Calvin Klein to network and get insider access to exciting deals, events, and job opportunities.

Interesting reads

America’s news influencers: 20%+ of Americans regularly get news from social media influencers [LINK]

What happened when Ford paid a famous YouTuber to drive around the globe in an EV [LINK]

Meet Christina Roki, the social media star behind TikTok’s most-commented video ever [LINK]

Trump may try to reverse the TikTok ban. Here's how he could [LINK]

Free Creator Economy Resource List

Looking for the latest news and insights on the creator economy? We’ve curated a selection of top industry resources — all continuously updated— to help marketers navigate the creator economy more effectively. Don’t miss our global marketing events calendar! Check it out here 👇