Position-based attribution
Position-based attribution, sometimes called U-shaped attribution, gives most of the credit for a conversion to the first and last touches and shares the remainder among the touches in between. A common split is 40% first, 40% last, 20% middle.
Position based encodes a view of the journey: the touch that introduced the customer and the touch that closed the sale did the most work, and everything in between helped. It is a reasonable default for businesses where discovery and the final decision are clearly separate moments.
A worked example, as arithmetic. A $300 order with three touches, a Meta click, a Google search click, and an email click, gives Meta $120 as the first touch, email $120 as the last, and Google the middle $60. With only two touches, each usually receives half.
Compared with last click, position based reveals channels that open journeys. Compared with first click, it reveals the channels that close them. Read it alongside other models rather than alone, and settle large budget questions with a holdout test, because no attribution model measures incrementality.
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