Attribution
Revenue attribution, from the first click to the signed deal
Your ad account counts leads. Your bank counts sales. Attribution is the line between the two, and it only holds if each lead keeps its source all the way to the deal.
Why the ad account cannot see the sale
An ad platform sees the click and, at best, the form. It does not see the call your team made, the appointment the lead missed or the quote signed weeks later. So it reports cost per lead and optimises for more leads, good or bad.
Attribution fixes that by keeping the source on the lead and following the lead to the money. When the chain holds, you can compare campaigns on what they earned. When it breaks anywhere, at the form or in a call nobody logged, the numbers drift back to guesswork.
How the chain is built
Source at the first step
The booking form records the page, the referrer, the UTM parameters and the ad as the lead is saved.
Ad and campaign on the lead
Each lead in the CRM carries the name of the ad and the campaign it came from.
Status history
Every move through the pipeline is kept: booked, showed, won. You see how far each lead got.
Deal and value
When there is a sale, the deal sits on the lead with its own stages and its value.
Feedback to Meta
Leads that meet the form’s qualification rules are reported to Meta through the Conversions API, so its campaigns learn from them.
Questions it lets you answer
Each answer comes from data already on the lead records.
| Question | Where the answer comes from |
|---|---|
| Which campaign brings the most booked appointments? | The campaign name on each lead, and its status history |
| Which ads bring leads who actually show up? | The ad name on each lead, and the showed status |
| Which source brings revenue? | The source on each lead, and the value of its won deals |
| Are AI assistants sending buyers? | The visit source classified by the forms, followed to the lead and its deal |
| What does a booked appointment cost? | Bookings per campaign from the CRM, set against the spend in the ad account |
What this is, and what it is not
Each lead carries one source: where its visit came from and the ad it clicked. That is enough to rank campaigns by bookings and revenue, the decision a budget meeting has to make.
It is not a multi-touch model that splits credit across every ad a buyer saw. When that question matters, it belongs in our analytics and attribution work. Reporting conversions to Google Ads is part of Google Ads management.
To turn bookings into a cost, put them next to what each campaign spent. Our cost per booked call calculator does the arithmetic, and our article on cost per lead explains why that number tells you more than cost per lead.
Frequently asked questions
Is this multi-touch attribution?
No. Each lead keeps the source of its visit and the ad and campaign it came from, then its status history and deal. Splitting credit across several touches is analysis work, covered by our analytics service.
What is sent back to Meta?
Leads that meet the qualification rules of their form, through the Conversions API, so Meta’s campaigns can optimise toward leads that fit your offer. How campaigns use that signal is part of our Meta ads work.
Does it upload conversions to Google Ads?
The platform reports qualified leads to Meta. Reporting conversions to Google Ads is handled in our Google Ads management service.
What does our team need to do?
Keep statuses current and record deals with their value. The source, ad and campaign are captured automatically. The outcome depends on your team updating the lead.
Last updated · By the Napexy team
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