--- name: marketing-attribution-reality-check description: "The attribution reality check discipline pointed at real deal journeys: how much channel credit shifts depending purely on which honest model you pick, computed across every real touchpoint — including the sharp swing a customer relationship management (CRM) system's unvalidated first-touch default has never actually been checked against. Use when: Marketing and Sales disagree about which channel actually deserves credit for a deal, and the CRM's default model has never been checked against an alternative. A budget conversation is about to lean on a channel-credit number, and you want to know honestly how much that number would change under a different, equally reasonable model. Not for: You already ran a real experiment (a geo holdout, incrementality test) that isolated a channel's true effect — trust that over any of this tool's three models. The deal genuinely had one touchpoint — there's no real attribution question to reality-check." --- # Marketing attribution reality check The attribution reality check discipline pointed at real deal journeys: how much channel credit shifts depending purely on which honest model you pick, computed across every real touchpoint — including the sharp swing a customer relationship management (CRM) system's unvalidated first-touch default has never actually been checked against. Family: Measurement · Format: .xlsx · Domain: commercial ## What it is A marketing attribution reality check computes how much credit for a deal shifts across three deliberately simple, honest models — first-attributed, last-attributed, and an even split — applied to real touchpoint journeys instead of a shop-floor outcome. It doesn't replace your CRM's attribution model with a better one; it pressure-tests the one you already have against two equally simple alternatives, so a channel that looks authoritative under today's default doesn't quietly pass as validated when it's never actually been checked. ## When to use it Use it when: - Marketing and Sales disagree about which channel actually deserves credit for a deal, and the CRM's default model has never been checked against an alternative. - A budget conversation is about to lean on a channel-credit number, and you want to know honestly how much that number would change under a different, equally reasonable model. - You want to know which channels are robustly credited regardless of model choice, and which ones only look strong under the specific model you happen to be using today. Not when: - You already ran a real experiment (a geo holdout, incrementality test) that isolated a channel's true effect — trust that over any of this tool's three models. - The deal genuinely had one touchpoint — there's no real attribution question to reality-check. ## How to fill it in - **scopeArea** — What deals, and what period, does this reality check cover? - **currentModel** — How is channel credit actually assigned today? Name the real convention in use — including a CRM default nobody deliberately chose — not the model you wish you had. - **cases** — For each deal: its real pipeline value, and every touchpoint with the real order it occurred in — your own record, never guessed. Credit by model and the swing between them are computed for you. - **narrative** — Drafted from the computed swing, naming which channels are robust and which are contested. ## What good looks like The example below continues the Beacon Analytics storyline and is directly grounded in the gap the marketing metric definition sheet already named without resolving it — the CRM's first-touch default for channel attribution — pressure-testing that exact default against two other honest models rather than inventing a new scenario. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/marketing-attribution-reality-check ## Common mistakes - **Treating a CRM's default attribution field as though it were a deliberately chosen, validated model.** — A default is not a decision — this tool exists specifically to check whether that default actually holds up against an equally simple alternative. - **Using this tool to pick a new 'correct' attribution model and rolling it out as the new default.** — Three simple models agreeing or disagreeing isn't the same as a controlled experiment — treat a large swing as a reason to investigate further, not as license to declare a new winner. - **Ignoring a channel that scores zero under every model without asking why.** — A channel that's genuinely never present isn't the same as a channel that's present but always in a position (like the very middle of a journey) that every simple model happens to undercount. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Marketing metric definition sheet** (`marketing-metric-definition-sheet`) — The metric definition sheet is where the CRM's first-touch default first got named as an unowned, unvalidated model; this reality check is where that default actually gets pressure-tested. - **Marketing key performance indicator (KPI) tree** (`marketing-kpi-tree`) — A driver metric left without a real number because of the attribution gap is exactly what this reality check gives an honest, computed sensitivity check against. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding whether a channel's swing is genuinely worth flagging to Sales leadership - Deciding what a real incrementality test to actually settle a contested channel would need to look like Analysis — AI helps: - Tightening the current-model description from raw notes into specific, checkable language - Drafting the narrative naming which channels are robust and which are contested, from the computed swing Drudgery — automated: - Computing credit under all three models and the swing between them - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Marketing attribution reality check is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/marketing-attribution-reality-check.