Attribution
In practice, for a UK buyer
The paragraph above is the neutral answer. This is the part a vendor glossary leaves out.
The distinction between attribution and incrementality is the most consequential one in media measurement, and most reporting blurs it. AdBuyMCP keeps them in separate verbs: responded covers observed outcomes on your own property matched to the campaign's immutable key, and carries an explicit note that it is correlation; caused is reserved for a powered geo-lift result. Two exclusions are enforced rather than advised — the synthetic baseline series never inflates response counts, and nothing dated before the flight can count as a response to it.
Goes deeper: Delivered, responded, caused, remembered
What this one connects to
Most confusion in media buying comes from two adjacent terms being used interchangeably, so these are the neighbours worth reading next.
Last-click attribution
An attribution rule that gives all the credit for an outcome to the final advertising touchpoint before it, and none to the rest. Simple, universally available, and systematically biased towards whichever channel sits closest to the conversion.
Incrementality
The share of an outcome that happened because of the advertising, measured against what would have happened anyway. Measured by comparing an exposed group with a comparable unexposed one, not by counting conversions that followed an advert.
CPA
The cost of one completed action, whether that is a sale, a lead or a booking, calculated by dividing spend by the actions attributed to it. That makes it entirely dependent on the attribution model underneath.
Evidence provenance
A label attached to a number recording how it was produced — reported by the seller, observed on your own property, estimated by a model, or established by a powered experiment — so its strength travels with it.
More on measurement and evidence
What you can prove afterwards, and the difference between a number that means something and a number that does not.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. You describe one audience and watch it compile into seven targeting specifications, each with the score for how much of the definition survived.
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