Blog: Last Click Addiction: How We Fucked Up Marketing
Table of Contents
Let’s start here:
We fucked up.
Not just us. The entire performance marketing industry.
We let ad platforms define success. We optimized conversions, not the P&L.
We built media plans on flawed data, patted ourselves on the back, and called it performance.
And it worked. Until it didn’t.
The Setup: Performance Marketing’s Dirty Secret
On paper, performance marketing is clean and simple.
Advertisers pay platforms for outcomes – clicks, leads, sales. Platforms tell you what worked. You adjust spend accordingly.
Seems logical. But here’s the problem:
The attribution models are broken.
All attribution models undercredit mid and upper funnel advertising.
Marketers are burning billions on sales that would’ve happened anyway.
Most teams still trust ad platforms to grade their own homework. When a dashboard glows green, agencies celebrate. Budgets increase. Everyone feels successful.
Then the CFO asks, “Why is revenue flat if we’re spending more?”
Cue the silence.
The Addiction: What Last-Click Is Costing Marketers
According to eMarketer, 78% of marketers use last click attribution to measure media effectiveness.
Last-click attribution rewards the ad that shows up last, not the one that influenced the decision.
It’s simple, flattering, and wrong.
We’ve all leaned on it because it’s easy to track, but what’s most trackable, isn’t driving new customers.
This addiction is killing marketing and creating pain for marketing leaders trying to get their bonus.
The Intervention:
That’s why we launched the Last Click Addiction campaign.
We built a campaign that treats marketing measurement like the problem it really is: an addiction to bad data, that’s costing marketing leaders their bonus.
There’s an apology video (yes, I’m in it), an ROI Reality Check tool, and resources for marketing leaders trying to rebuild trust with their finance teams.
We’re not calling for chaos. We’re calling for clarity.
Marketing leaders should be asking their media teams one question:
“How do we know this is actually working?”
If the answer starts with because Google, Meta and the CRM said so – it’s time to dig deeper.
The Recovery: Better Measurement, Real Revenue
Recovery means rewiring how we measure success.
That starts with modern tools like incrementality testing — where you split your audience into test and control groups — one sees increased (or decreased) ad spend, the other doesn’t. The difference in outcomes tells you the true lift your marketing created.
Example:
One client thought Demand Gen wasn’t working.
Google said it was delivering a $71 cost per purchase, far above their $48 target.
The data said kill it.
But we ran an incrementality test. The results?
Demand Gen was actually driving 328% more revenue than Google reported.
That means the real cost per purchase was well below target.
So instead of cutting it, we scaled it. And revenue followed.
The Bottom Line: This Ends Now
The fix isn’t more data. It’s better data.
Getting off last-click starts with tools like incrementality testing—so you can measure what’s actually driving revenue, not just what shows up last.
That means challenging what the platforms report and building dashboards that reflect reality, not fantasy. When you do, you stop optimizing for fake wins and start aligning marketing with the metrics that matter most: revenue, margin, and growth.
So here it is: our public apology, and our invitation to anyone who’s ready to participate in the industry’s healing.
Ready to break the cycle? Let’s go.
