There’s a quiet pressure simmering under the surface of most marketing and revenue organisations — the sort no one says out loud in leadership meetings because it sounds too risky, too political, too honest:
You’re being asked to deliver bigger results using a measurement model that no longer reflects how buyers actually buy.
And the most curious part? Everyone suspects this… yet the dashboards remain the same. The board packets remain the same. The attribution model remains the same. Welcome to the paradox of modern marketing: we’re running 2025 organisations on 2013 reporting logic.
Last-Touch Attribution Looks Clean, Safe, and Reassuring
It’s neat. It’s tidy. It turns spaghetti-like customer journeys into linear, CFO-friendly narratives.
- It gives executives a sense of control — because a single click is easier to fund than a complex ecosystem.
- It feels predictable to finance — “If this ad drove the opportunity, spend more here.”
- It removes ambiguity — ambiguity, after all, is career-limiting.
Last-touch is the corporate equivalent of a bedtime story: simple enough to be soothing, structured enough to feel true.
It’s a Fictional Model in a Non-Fictional World
Buyers don’t move in straight lines anymore — if they ever did. They bounce between channels, ask peers, Google the hell out of alternatives, lurk in communities, skim LinkedIn, and click only when they're already convinced.
Last-touch captures the final tap on the glass, not the current beneath the surface.
And the cost? Marketers end up reverse-engineering success inside a system that only rewards the last click, not the real journey. A journey that is:
- messy,
- non-linear,
- emotionally driven,
- and full of invisible influences.
No dashboard in the world can capture “My colleague mentioned you in the lift,” “I saw your brand pop up three times last month,” or “I didn’t click your ad, but it reminded me you existed.”
But these are the things that build pipeline.
Leaders Aren’t Clinging to Last-Touch Because They’re Stubborn
This is the part no one says out loud, but we will:
Leaders stick with last-touch because they’re accountable for hitting a number — and the boardroom does not reward uncertainty.
You don’t walk into a QBR with feelings. You walk in with numbers. And last-touch, for all its flaws, produces numbers fast enough to feel safe.
Safety Now Creates Fragility Later
When businesses over-optimise for the “reporting layer,” they starve the “demand layer.” Brands become brilliant at measuring performance but terrible at creating it.
The result?
- Short-term wins that don’t repeat,
- Pipeline built on discounts and tricks,
- Under-invested brand memory systems,
- and teams stuck in reactive mode.
Last-touch is brilliant at telling you what happened. It is useless at telling you what will happen.
The Wanted.Berlin Approach: Evolution, Not Detonation
Here’s the heresy: you don’t need to “blow up” last-touch tomorrow. That’s a great way to get fired.
What you can do — what smart teams do — is build the replacement system quietly, rationally, and in parallel.
1. Hit the target with what you have.
Last-touch stays as your operational reporting layer. Run direct-response campaigns that actually solve a real job: useful content tools, tightly targeted demos, friction-removing offers.
Prove you can still deliver today’s number.
2. Layer in reality, privately at first.
Run parallel measurement streams:
- margin-based ROI,
- self-reported attribution,
- share-of-search,
- funnel velocity,
- win rate by source.
This is where leaders suddenly see what actually drives revenue — often for the first time.
3. Translate insights into CFO-friendly language.
Don’t talk about “brand.” Talk about “cost per incremental revenue dollar.” Talk about “contribution margin by buying stage.”
Finance trusts the models that reflect how money actually moves.
4. Socialise the shift slowly.
No revolutions. Just honest forecasting improvements, reduced waste, multi-view dashboards, and evidence of efficiency gains.
Show that modern measurement produces fewer surprises and more predictability.
5. Create safety for change.
Leaders adopt new systems not because they’re innovative, but because they’re safe. Your job is to de-risk the transition step by step.
The Real Debate Was Never About Attribution
It’s about decision-making. It’s about giving the organisation a fuller picture of what truly drives pipeline. And it’s about building an engine that doesn’t collapse every time Google sneezes or a CPC spikes.
You don’t have to choose between hitting your number today and modernising your measurement tomorrow. Smart leaders do both.