Attribution models

A network’s postback names one click: the click that led to the conversion. That click is what Tallyray sends to your traffic source, and what rules, tuners and bids read. Reports can also share a conversion’s credit among the other clicks the same person made on the way to it. This guide explains how.

The journey

A conversion’s journey is made of touches. A touch is a click to the conversion’s offer, counted once at its latest click to it, so a double click is one touch.

• The click the postback names, the anchor, is always a touch, and the last one. Clicks after it are not touches.
• The other touches are the same browser’s clicks to the same offer, at or before the anchor and within the lookback before the conversion, with bots left out.
• A journey has at most 20 touches: the earliest and the 19 latest.
• Only the conversion’s own offer counts: a click to a VPN offer did nothing for a dating offer’s sale.

A conversion made without a click (a coupon, an app’s aggregated postback) has no journey: every model credits it whole, at its campaign.

One browser

Tallyray recognizes one browser’s clicks across your campaigns by a first-party cookie, _jr, on your tracking domain. It holds a random id and nothing from the visit. It is written at clicks only, and:

• in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland only at a click whose consent grants both ad_user_data and ad_personalization; a click denying either deletes it;
• elsewhere at each click, unless the click’s consent denies either signal;
• a Sec-GPC: 1 request deletes it wherever the visitor is;
• it lives as long as the lookback;
• it is per tracking domain: a buyer whose campaigns run on several domains has a journey per domain (unless cross-device linking is on).

A browser that clears its cookies starts again, and so does one whose browser deletes a redirector’s cookies. Journeys are a lower bound, never a guess. A click without a cookie is a journey of its own.

Across devices

If the workspace’s owner turns on cross-device linking (off by default), a conversion that carries an email, phone or user id also takes the clicks of the other browsers that person was seen converting in. For example: a person registers from a push ad on their phone; the network posts the lead with their email. A week later they deposit from a Google ad on their laptop, and the sale’s postback carries the same email. The sale’s journey is the phone’s click and then the laptop’s.

• Links are made from the identifiers conversions carry, keyed by a keyed hash (never the plain hash), and kept for the lookback after last seen. A person keeps their 20 latest browsers.
• A shared laptop links nobody’s phones to each other.
• Links are never shown, exported, sent to a source or given to an AI client.
• The owner can forget a person: give an email, phone or user id, and their links are deleted.
• Turning cross-device off deletes the workspace’s links at once.

The models

Each model gives each touch a share. A conversion’s shares sum to exactly the conversion, and its revenue is shared the same way.

Model	Share
Last click (the default)	the anchor, whole: the network’s click
First click	the earliest touch, whole
Linear	equal shares
Time decay	weight 2^(−age ÷ half-life), where age is how long before the conversion the click was. Half-life: 1 hour to 30 days, 7 days by default
Position based	the first touch and the last get their shares (40% each by default, together at most 100%); the rest share what is left evenly. One touch takes everything; two split the two shares in proportion

Costs do not move: a CPA or revshare conversion’s cost stays at its anchor under every model, and visits’ costs stay with their visits.

Settings

Under Settings (Workspace), buyers set:

Setting	Default	Bounds
Default model	last click	one of the five
Lookback	30 days	1 minute to 90 days, and no more than the click window
Half-life	7 days	1 hour to 30 days
First and last click shares	40% and 40%	together at most 100%

The workspace’s owner alone turns journeys (the cookie) and cross-device linking on or off. Cross-device needs journeys. The click window (90 days by default) is a separate setting: the first conversion on a click older than it is kept but unattributed, and the lookback cannot be longer.

Caution

Settings apply to conversions attributed after the change. Credits already made are kept, so history does not move under a saved view, a comparison or a scheduled email.

Reading reports under a model

• A report, a saved view, a time series and the placements screen can name a model; with none, the workspace’s default is used.
• Each share counts at its touch’s dimensions (campaign, connection, placement, tokens, device, country, lander, step), at its visit’s time under the visit time basis.
• Totals agree. Grouped or filtered by the conversion’s own dimensions alone (offer, network, event type, status, coupon), totals are the same under every model. Filtered by a touch’s dimension (a campaign, a source), they differ. That is what a model is.
• Conversions can be fractions: a report shows them rounded, and a CSV writes decimals under a model whose shares are not whole. CR, EPC and CPA are worked out from the fractions.
• Side by side: ask for every model at once to see each row’s conversions, revenue, profit, ROI and CPA under all five.
• A conversion’s page lists its journey: each touch’s time, campaign, source and placement, whether it came from another device, and each model’s share.
• Under Reports, Paths, the path report shows conversions by their journey’s sources or campaigns in order (“PushNet ×2 → Meta”), with each path’s conversions, revenue, average touches and average time from the first touch, for up to 13 months. At most 10 steps show (else the first 5 and the last 5).
• Impressions are the same under every model, and never credited.

What does not change

• Conversions sent to your source. One request per conversion change, to the anchor’s connection only, with its click id and the whole value. A model never splits, moves or repeats a delivery, and changing the model changes nothing sent. Each platform attributes among its own clicks, and told of a fraction or another source’s click it would count it as its own.
• Rules, tuners and bids read last click, so changing the default model never changes what they do.
• Usage and caps count conversions, never credits.

If Tallyray’s click records have not caught up when a conversion arrives, the conversion waits (up to 24 hours) for the journey. After that it is made with its click alone, credited whole by every model, and marked incomplete.