How Attribution Models Are Eating Your Budget Whole

Episode 42 of Marketing Analytics with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna unpack the single biggest blind spot in modern marketing measurement: budget cannibalization from channels that look effective in your attribution model but are actually stealing conversions from other touchpoints. Using a concrete example from a fictional DTC brand called 'Bloom & Spruce', they walk through how a last-click model can credit a retargeting display ad for a sale that was already guaranteed by an earlier email campaign — and how that misattribution can inflate retargeting spend by 40% while the email channel gets starved. They then explain why multi-touch models don't automatically fix the problem and what a simple 'what-if' scenario analysis can reveal about where your budget is actually going. No abstract theory here — the hosts simulate the math in real time, showing listeners exactly how to spot cannibalization in their own dashboards. They also touch on a listener question about whether view-through attribution makes the problem worse. Recorded June 10, 2026. #AttributionModel #BudgetCannibalization #LastClickAttribution #MultiTouchAttribution #ViewThroughAttribution #MarketingAnalytics #MarketingMeasurement #DTCBrand #DigitalMarketing #AdSpendOptimization #ConversionTracking #EmailMarketing #Retargeting #BloomAndSpruce #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #Marketing #DataDrivenMarketing Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo