Audience Measurement
Attribution
The analytical science of assigning credit to a specific media touchpoint for a desired consumer action, such as a website visit or a finalized sale.
What is Attribution?
Attribution is broadcast's answer to digital's last-click model. Historically, radio and TV could measure delivery but not direct causation — a brand knew the ad ran, but not which sale it drove. Modern attribution closes that gap through IP matching (inferring households exposed to a CTV ad by IP-to-geo correlation), promo codes, trackable phone numbers, and ACR-based closed-loop measurement.
Multi-touch attribution models go further, distributing fractional credit across every touchpoint in the customer journey: a CTV impression Monday, a radio spot Wednesday, a search click Friday, and a purchase Saturday might each get weighted credit. The shift from last-touch to multi-touch attribution is rebalancing how brands credit upper-funnel broadcast against lower-funnel digital.
Why it matters
Historically difficult for terrestrial radio, modern platforms now use IP matching, pixel tracking, and promo codes to mathematically prove broadcast ROI.
Related terms
- ROI (Return on Investment)— The overall net profit or revenue gained compared directly to the total cost of the marketing initiative or software tool.
- ACR (Automatic Content Recognition)— Technology embedded within Smart TVs that visually or acoustically scans what is playing to identify the exact content or commercials.
- Actives vs. Passives— Active listeners actively contact radio stations for requests or contests; passive listeners consume the media without direct engagement.
- Aided Recall— A research methodology used to test audience memory retention of advertisements by providing specific prompts or hints to the respondent.