Glossary · Attribuer

Attributed sale

An attributed sale is a sale that could be tied to an identified click, occurring within the attribution window. All other sales are recorded too, but without an origin: those are unattributed sales.

Relier une vente à ce qui l’a produite — et refuser d’inventer quand le fil manque. The forty terms of the trade

What it is for

It is the only sale that makes a campaign judgeable. Total revenue tells you whether the month was good; attributed revenue tells you which of your placements produced it. That distinction is the whole subject: the first can be read in a bank account, the second requires measurement.

How it is built

Three things are needed: a recorded click, a person tied to that click, and a sale declared for that person within the window. One missing and the sale stays unattributed — that is a result, not a failure.

The classic mistake

Reading attributed revenue as total revenue. They are two different numbers, and the gap between them is precisely the information: it is the share of your sales whose cause you do not yet know.

Unattributed revenue

Two numbers people mix up constantly

Total revenue

What you banked. Readable in a bank account.

Attributed revenue

What you know the cause of. Requires measurement.

The gap between the two is not an error: it is your room to improve.

How a sale travels back to its link

What Subtraq does with it

Sales only reach Subtraq through the server, with an interface key. An amount posted from a browser does not count: it is an amount anyone could write.


Read next

Un terme seul ne sert à rien. Voici ceux qui le rendent utilisable.

Unattributed revenue

Read the definition

Attribution window

Read the definition

Sales tracking

Open the page

Server-side conversion API

Read the definition

« Attributed sale », une fois posé sur de vraies ventes

An attribution model is not understood by reading it: it is understood by watching two campaigns swap places when you change it. The demo opens a workspace filled with fictional data, labelled as such, where the three models are compared on the same sales.

Compare the three models