Why attribution breaks down across teams and channels
Panelists also discussed that attribution isn’t only hard to measure—it’s hard to agree on.
Vinny Rinaldi, VP of consumer connections at The Hershey Company, pointed out that attribution often breaks down because too many teams try to claim the same result. “At the end of the day, there’s only one unit tied to moving through the register or not,” he said. “It’s not one team that did it. It’s everyone did it.”
The path to purchase is also harder to track now. Marissa Solan, U.S. director of earned and social media at Haleon, mentioned how fragmented consumer behavior has become. “There are just so many pathways—how are you able to track all those?” she said. “You can go from awareness to purchase in the same moment today.”
Clean measurement is harder than it looks
The group turned to how incrementality is measured—and where it falls short.
Geoff Matthews, general manager, household essentials at Fetch, said randomized control trials remain the most reliable way to isolate impact, but they require discipline. “People throw out control, but it’s got to be randomized,” he said. “People will model it, or they’ll stack it after the fact, and that’s really challenging.”
