Attribution Gets Harder as Platforms Lean on Modeled Data

As a journalist who still marks up media plans by hand, I keep returning to one point — When AI answers resolve queries before a click, classic last-click stories fall apart.

For context, see Wikipedia: Marketing attribution.

I am less interested in keynote poetry than in the levers a brand can actually toggle before Friday’s budget meeting.

1. Define the conversion before you scale
2. Separate brand safety from performance tests
3. Compare incrementality, not vanity CTR

I still talk to strategists who celebrate a launch week and then skip the autopsy. That is how budgets vanish. Schedule the review before the campaign starts, while everyone still agrees what success meant.

Source: Skai. Numbers and product claims above come from that reporting; interpretation is mine.