Attribution in 2026: what actually matters

The attribution conversation has gotten dumber every year since 2021. Here's the stack we actually run, what we trust, and how to know when the platform is lying.

Every founder we talk to has the same attribution wound. Meta says 40 leads, GA4 says 22, the CRM says 31, and the sales team swears half the deals came from referrals. Nobody is wrong. Nobody is right. Everyone has a different definition of a 'lead.'

After running attribution stacks across hundreds of service-business accounts, we've landed on a model that works for companies spending between $5k and $150k a month. It's not elegant. It is honest.

Multi-touch attribution required a clean device graph. iOS 14.5 ended that. Last-click was always wrong, but at least it was wrong consistently - now even the click data is noisy because half of it never reaches the platform. Marketing mix modeling works, but it needs $5M+ in annual ad spend and a year of clean history. Most service businesses have neither.