Attribution is the agency’s favourite magic trick.

In the pitch, it’s a spreadsheet.
In reality, it’s a fog machine.

They promise you’ll see exactly what’s working, what isn’t, and where to put the next dollar.

Then the first time you ask why revenue didn’t move, you get the same speech.

“Attribution is complicated.”
“There are multiple touchpoints.”
“iOS changes.”
“Privacy.”
“Walled gardens.”
“Offline conversion.”
“Brand effect.”

All true, by the way.

Also completely useless if you’re spending real money and someone has to answer to a board.

Because the dirty move is this:

When performance looks good, they take credit.
When performance looks bad, they hide behind complexity.

That’s not measurement. That’s selective accountability.

Serious businesses don’t pretend attribution is perfect.
They build a measurement system that’s good enough to make decisions and hard enough to game.

A few things that instantly improve the conversation:

Holdouts where you can.
Geo tests when you can’t.
Media mix sanity checks instead of platform reports.
Revenue and margin by cohort.
Close rates by source.
Call recordings and lead quality scoring.
And a shared definition of “incremental” that doesn’t change depending on the month.

If your agency can’t tell you, with a straight face, what they think is incremental and how they’re proving it, you’re not buying performance marketing.

You’re buying storytelling with numbers.