Welcome to the Post-Attribution Era
Digital marketing used to feel like a science experiment. We had pixels, UTMs, attribution models, and dashboards so detailed you could track what color shirt a buyer was wearing when they clicked. Oh the good ole days of no privacy concerns online. But it also makes sense why they’re gone now.
Do you know what else is going extinct?
- Clicks are dying. From Google, from social, from every platform that wants to trap users there.
- Attribution is a joke. There are so many conversations we can’t even track.
- And the “modern” digital marketing game
Wait, WTF?! Yep, it looks a lot more like old-school offline marketing than us marketers want to admit.
The Future of Digital Marketing Is Just Showing Up
Let’s be real. You’re not going to track your way to brand growth anymore. The further we move into the privacy-first, AI-everywhere future, the harder it gets to prove what exactly is working.
- You can’t see through Meta’s black box.
- You’re not tracking conversations in Reddit threads.
- You sure as hell don’t get analytics from someone in an iMessage group thread at 1am.
So what’s the move? Show up. Loudly. Everywhere your audience is.
Because if they’re seeing your competitors and not you, then that’s game over.
Where’s the Data?
Here’s where most brands start panicking. “No data? No ROI? No reliable attribution? How do we justify the budget?”
Pause. Deep breath. Relax.
Start talking to clients and stakeholders about what can be measured because the Golden Age of Data Tracking is long-gone.
What did old-school marketers track?
- Did sales go up after the campaign?
- Are more people typing our name into Google?
- Did we see a spike in returning customers?
- Are our trailing KPIs (revenue, leads, sign-ups) trending up?
- Did our traffic go up after an awareness ad-campaign on TV?
That’s your new playbook.
Much like radio, print, and TV – you’ll only get surface level data at best. But you won’t always know what worked. You’ll just know that the work moved the needle.
In Translation: What’s Actually Happening
Let’s break it down even further. This is the current landscape:
- SEO is now zero-click.
- First it was knowledge panels, then SERP features, and now AI Overviews taking clicks…
- But that doesn’t mean you give up on ranking, and holding real estate in those spots.
- Social isn’t sending many click throughs to sites anymore either.
- But that doesn’t mean you ghost your feed.
- People forget you exist five seconds after seeing you. So make your content actually memorable.
- Do you remember the marketing campaign when Coke had an ad saying people bought 2x more than Pepsi.
- Here’s Pepsi’s response:
If your entire strategy is built around clicks and conversions, you’re missing the point. This isn’t just about buy now moments anymore, it’s about remember me later presence.
Your Audience Lives in Many Places, Be in All of Them
You can’t afford to be a one-channel brand anymore. Your audience is:
- Scrolling TikTok
- Lurking in private Facebook Groups
- Browsing Reddit subs
- Reading blog posts
- Watching YouTube deep dives
- Listening to podcasts while walking their dog
They’re everywhere. And you need to be, too.
You’re not creating to drive clicks anymore. You’re creating to build recall. You’re stacking impressions, memory, affinity, trust.
Stop Chasing Attribution. Start Embedding Your Brand Into Brains.
Attribution is GONE, it’s note coming back. The funnel is fragmented. And waiting for perfect data before you act? That’s a losing strategy.
Start asking better questions:
- Are we everywhere our audience / ICP / personas are?
- Are we being remembered?
- Are people coming back?
- Are our trailing KPIs moving?
If the answer is yes, there’s your proof.
It’s not clicks in a zero-click era. It’s not even “We spent this in social ads and made that” anymore. Why?
I’ve got clients who have very little revenue attribution for their social ads, but I can line up big improvements in Organic Search, Referral, and Direct revenue with when they started their Social Ads.
- So should I assume those other channels magically skyrocketed in revenue?
- Or is it more plausible that users saw the ads, didn’t act on it the ad itself, and later interacted with those other channels?
If you’re not getting that type of result, or that’s not proof… then it’s time to start rethinking of how (and where) you’re showing up, and how you’re informing stakeholders of results.
Echo or Obscurity, You Pick
Marketing today isn’t a clean funnel. It’s an echo chamber. And if your brand isn’t echoing in the places that matter? Then good luck converting the people who never even heard you in the first place.
☠️ Rest in peace to the golden age of attribution.
👑 Long live brand presence.
📡 Long live impressions everywhere.
