The real battle isn’t about attribution “collapsing”—it’s about attribution being reconstructed around a new source of truth. And whoever controls that source of truth controls the economic logic of the entire AI advertising ecosystem.
How Attribution Works Today
Google’s last-click attribution became the de facto standard not because it was the most accurate model, but because Google controlled the measurement infrastructure and had the incentive to make search look good.
Meta built its own attribution modeling precisely because relying on Google’s truth meant Google captured the credit. Each platform’s attribution system is optimized to demonstrate that platform’s value.
The New Attribution Problem
When a user asks ChatGPT “what’s the best running shoe under $150?” and completes a purchase through Instant Checkout, who gets credit?
- The podcast that mentioned the brand three weeks ago?
- The review site whose content trained the model?
- The knowledge graph that established the brand’s entity authority?
- The merchant’s structured data that made the product discoverable?
The platform that answers these questions—and gets merchants and advertisers to accept those answers as truth—captures the economic value.
The Assumptions Funnel
Native AI attribution pipelines will track the “assumptions funnel” rather than the click funnel. Instead of measuring which touchpoint preceded the conversion, they’ll measure which signals preceded the AI’s recommendation:
- Brand mentions in training data
- Entity authority scores
- Sentiment signals from reviews
- Structured data quality from product feeds
- Real-time inventory accuracy
These become the new “touchpoints” that attribution models will weight.
Google’s Structural Advantage
Google already operates the dominant attribution infrastructure. Google Analytics, Google Ads conversion tracking, and the broader Google Marketing Platform constitute the measurement backbone for most digital advertising. UCP transactions flow through Google’s infrastructure, which means Google can track the full journey.
OpenAI’s Challenge
OpenAI is building attribution from scratch. Without a credible attribution story, advertisers will treat ChatGPT ads as experimental budget rather than core spend.
The difference between “we’re testing ChatGPT” and “ChatGPT is a primary channel” depends entirely on whether CMOs believe the numbers.
This is part of a comprehensive analysis. Read the full analysis on The Business Engineer.
