Attribution Puzzle: Why marketers are still struggling to see the full picture

As marketing budgets tilt sharply toward measurable channels—led by retail media and connected TV (CTV)—the pressure to deliver quick, data-backed results has never been greater. Yet, attribution remains the Achilles’ heel of India’s performance marketing boom.

Performance marketing, a digital strategy where advertisers pay only when a specific action is completed—such as a click, lead, sale, or download—promises accountability by tying every rupee spent to a measurable outcome. However, despite the explosion of data and analytics tools, marketers continue to struggle to connect the dots across fragmented consumer journeys that span multiple devices, platforms, and walled gardens.

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Even as massive marketing budgets are being channelled into performance campaigns across digital platforms, as much as 50% of attribution still lies in the grey zone, say experts. 

For digital-first sectors such as fintech, e-commerce, and quick commerce, attribution inconsistencies can have direct business consequences. “A 5 per cent attribution error on a ₹100 crore annual digital spend can distort performance metrics and strategic decision-making,” observed a senior digital head at a leading retail conglomerate.

Notably, India’s digital advertising industry grew by 19% in 2024, reaching ₹49,251 crore—roughly half of the total advertising spend, as per the Dentsu-e4m Digital Advertising Report 2025. This growth is largely driven by the shift toward performance marketing, a data-driven approach that focuses on measurable outcomes rather than traditional brand awareness campaigns. 

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Blind spots in measurement 

The boom in e-commerce, increasing digital adoption, and the proliferation of CTV and smartphones have made India a fertile ground for performance-driven campaigns. With over 900 million internet users, marketers now have unprecedented reach and precision to target consumers efficiently.

Advertisers cite cross-device tracking as one of the biggest gaps in today’s performance measurement systems. Cookies are fading, device IDs are restricted, and each major ecosystem—Meta, Google, Amazon, OTT players—functions in isolation.

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“There is inconsistency in conversion windows across Meta, Google, Amazon, and programmatic platforms, creating temporal misalignment that makes unified performance measurement difficult,” explains Abhirup Datta, CEO, Performance Practice Media Solutions, dentsu India & CEO, Sokrati India. “From last-click and first-click to data-driven, position-based, and multi-touch models, each approach attributes credit differently, making it hard to compare performance across campaigns.”

“Attribution complexity today is really about connecting the dots in a world where the dots keep moving,” noted Ashutosh Nagare, Vice President - Head of Performance Marketing, Interactive Avenues. “With signal loss and data silos growing, no single model can confidently map that entire journey.”

According to Nagare, “The biggest challenge is identity fragmentation. Cookies are disappearing, device IDs are restricted, and each platform guards its own data. So even when a user engages across Meta, Google, and an OTT ad, we often can’t tie it back to one person. Add in app-to-web journeys and offline triggers like store visits or WhatsApp leads, and you realize a lot of conversions go unattributed—even though marketing influenced them. This leads to a disadvantage where media monies are pushed toward channels that drive last-click conversions.”

Lack of interoperability 

The lack of interoperability between retail media, search, and social channels means marketers often work with fragmented datasets, which not only skews campaign efficiency but also complicates bottom-line accountability. Brands end up double-counting or underreporting conversions depending on which dashboard they trust, experts say.

“Attribution complexity today mirrors the fragmented consumer journey itself,” says Vipul Kedia, Chief Operating Officer, Affle3i. “The lack of interoperability across platforms leads to data asymmetry—marketers know they’ve contributed to a user’s path but can’t always determine which part of the journey they’ve impacted.” He adds that a lack of standardization in measurement makes it difficult to create a unified, consistent view of the user journey.

Datta echoes this: “There are multiple sources of truth. Every platform—whether Google Ads, Meta, or analytics tools like GA4 or Appsflyer—reports conversions based on its own logic and attribution methodology. This creates discrepancies across data sources, leading to conflicting ‘truths.’”

Privacy laws and multiple tracking 

Privacy-driven APIs such as Meta’s Aggregated Event Measurement and Google’s Ads Data Hub now offer only aggregated insights rather than user-level data, limiting visibility into the full customer journey. At the same time, offline conversions—from store visits and call centre interactions to CRM data—often remain disconnected from digital touchpoints, making real-time integration a challenge.

To complicate matters further, multiple tracking layers like web analytics tools, mobile measurement partners (MMPs), and ad pixels frequently lead to event duplication or data loss, resulting in inconsistent or inflated attribution metrics. “Evolving data policies such as iOS14+, cookie deprecation, and GDPR have further limited user-level tracking, pushing marketers toward modeled or aggregated data. This transition has expanded attribution from deterministic tracking to probabilistic and modeled frameworks,” Datta noted.

Adding to this complexity is “fraudulent activity” that exploits attribution loopholes. Certain players inject fake clicks or mimic user behaviour to claim credit for conversions they never influenced, inflating performance metrics and diverting marketing budgets away from genuine value creation, Kedia pointed out.