Greater Marketing Efficiency with Multi-Touch Attribution

Overview

In today’s fragmented media landscape, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands face increasing pressure to prove the effectiveness of every marketing dollar. Traditional attribution models such as last-click or first-touch and fall short in capturing the full journey a customer takes before making a purchase. This case study explores how a global CPG brand implemented multi-touch attribution (MTA) to uncover hidden value, improve budget allocation, and increase overall marketing ROI.

The Challenge: Gaining True Visibility into Channel Performance

This CPG company operates across a wide mix of channels—TV, paid search, programmatic display, influencer campaigns, social media ads, email, and in-store promotions. While their marketing investment was substantial, they struggled to answer a simple but critical question: 
 
“Which channels actually drive sales—and how much credit do they deserve?” 
 
Previously relying on a last-click attribution model, the brand often misattributed conversions to only the final touchpoint in a long and complex customer journey. As a result, awareness-building and mid-funnel tactics like content marketing, influencer partnerships, and organic social were undervalued or cut prematurely.

Solution: Transitioning to Multi-Touch Attribution

To better understand the full impact of their marketing mix, the company implemented a multi-touch attribution (MTA) model. This involved:

• Deploying analytics tools capable of tracking user behavior across devices, sessions, and platforms
• Creating a weighted attribution model to assign credit across multiple touchpoints
• Integrating online and offline data to close the loop on measurement
• Using AI/ML-based models to simulate different budget reallocation scenarios

With MTA in place, the brand could finally see the true contribution of each channel across the funnel—from awareness to purchase and beyond.

Results: Smarter Spending, Better Results

The shift to MTA yielded immediate and measurable benefits:

• 20% increase in marketing budget efficiency
• Identification of undervalued channels
• More strategic campaign planning
• Improved cross-channel attribution accuracy, leading to smarter resource allocation
• Enhanced visibility into customer journey touchpoints, enabling more personalized and timely messaging

Quantitative Impact

Metric	Before MTA	After MTA
Marketing Budget Efficiency	Inconsistent and reactive	+20% gain through reallocation
Channel Visibility	Limited view (last click bias)	Full-funnel insights
Attribution Accuracy	Low	High (multi-channel weight distribution)
Campaign Optimization Speed	Slow and guess-based	Real-time and data-driven

Conclusion

Multi-touch attribution allowed this leading CPG brand to finally align their spending with performance. Instead of rewarding only the channels that closed the sale, the brand recognized the layered, nonlinear nature of consumer journeys. In doing so, they unlocked higher efficiency, deeper consumer insights, and a competitive edge in a crowded market. 
 
As marketing complexity increases, tools like MTA are no longer optional—they’re essential for brands that want to grow smarter, not just louder.