Marketing Attribution vs Conversion Tracking

Conversion tracking records that an outcome happened. Attribution decides which marketing interaction or interactions receive credit for that outcome.

Conversion tracking asks what happened

A conversion event might be a lead, purchase, booked call or upgrade. Tracking captures the event, its timestamp, value and available identifiers.

Attribution asks who gets credit

Once the event exists, attribution applies rules to connect it to traffic sources, campaigns or touchpoints. Different models can assign the same conversion differently.

You need both

Without reliable conversion events, attribution has nothing trustworthy to allocate. Without attribution, conversion counts alone do not explain which marketing activity produced them.

Troubleshoot in order

If reports disagree, first verify that the conversion event is firing once and with the correct value. Then inspect source persistence, identity and attribution-window differences.