Compare Google Analytics channel revenue credit with marketing costs and recorded sales. Work through a spreadsheet comparison, reconcile the totals, and separate attribution changes from business growth.
Attribution models in Google Analytics assign credit for key events and revenue to marketing touchpoints. Compare those credits under consistent report settings, then match them to campaign costs and recorded sales. A change in channel credit can change your interpretation without changing the company's sales.
Google's current attribution overview lists these methods for attribution reports:
| Method | What receives credit | What the comparison answers |
|---|---|---|
| Data-driven attribution | Interactions receive credit based on Google's analysis of path data | How does the supplied allocation distribute the outcome? |
| Paid and organic last click | The last eligible channel, generally excluding direct traffic | Which channel receives the closing credit? |
| Google paid channels last click | The last eligible Google Ads interaction, with a paid-and-organic last-click fallback | How does a Google paid channel perspective allocate the outcome? |
Google's overview also documents the removal of first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution in November 2023. They should not appear as instructions for configuring a current report. The broader marketing attribution comparison explains credit rules without depending on a platform's available settings.
Covirage is not affiliated with Google.
Open Advertising, then Attribution, then Attribution models. Choose the purchase key event, a consistent channel dimension, and the methods to compare. Google's attribution report instructions explain these choices and the report's export option.
Save the property, currency, filters, reporting time basis, lookback window, selected event, and export date beside the worksheet. Use event time when reconciling purchases occurring in the reporting period. Ad interaction time answers a different question: it can include credit for outcomes occurring after the selected interaction period.
Export campaign costs separately. Map each campaign to one channel in a small lookup sheet before aggregating. Keep an explicit unmatched category; do not force an unknown campaign into paid search because the label looks familiar.
Google's attribution settings documentation says changes to reporting attribution affect event-scoped dimensions, including campaign and source, while session and first-user dimensions are unaffected. Keep that scope consistent across files.
A US equipment supplier compares a completed campaign cohort. The revenue exports cover the same purchases, and costs include the agreed media and campaign operating expenses for that cohort. These are illustrative business figures, not platform benchmarks.
Put the following columns in A through D, with headers in row 1:
| Channel | Data-driven revenue credit (USD) | Last-click revenue credit (USD) | Marketing cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | 24,000 | 30,000 | 12,000 |
| Paid social | 18,000 | 12,000 | 8,000 |
| Organic search | 12,000 | 12,000 | 2,000 |
| 6,000 | 6,000 | 3,000 | |
| Total | 60,000 | 60,000 | 25,000 |
Add dollar change in E, percentage change in F, and data-driven revenue per marketing dollar in G. Enter these formulas in E2, F2, and G2, respectively, then fill down through row 5:
=B2-C2
=IF(C2=0,"",E2/C2)
=IF(D2=0,"",B2/D2)
The blank guards mark undefined ratios. Investigate them rather than interpreting a blank as zero return.
| Channel | Credit change (USD) | Credit change | Revenue per marketing dollar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | -6,000 | -20.0% | 2.00 |
| Paid social | 6,000 | 50.0% | 2.25 |
| Organic search | 0 | 0.0% | 6.00 |
| 0 | 0.0% | 2.00 | |
| Total | 0 | 0.0% | 2.40 |
Percentages are rounded to one decimal and ratios to two decimals. Paid social gains $6,000 of credit while paid search loses the same amount. The total stays $60,000: no additional sale was created by selecting another attribution method.
The total ratio is =SUM(B2:B5)/SUM(D2:D5), or 60,000 / 25,000 = 2.40. It is not an average of channel ratios. Use marketing ROI versus ROAS to take the next step from revenue credit to contribution after costs.
The method-to-method check is necessary but incomplete. Both exports could omit purchases that appear in finance's records.
| Sales reconciliation item | Amount (USD) |
|---|---|
| Recorded merchandise sales before refunds | 72,000 |
| Recorded refunds | -6,000 |
| Recorded net merchandise sales | 66,000 |
| Revenue represented in the attribution comparison | 60,000 |
| Confirmed sales absent from the tracked purchase export | 6,000 |
| Attributed revenue plus confirmed unmatched sales | 66,000 |
| Remaining difference | 0 |
This example excludes tax and shipping on both sides. Finance verifies the unmatched sales against order records and confirms that refunds are treated consistently. The bridge is 72,000 - 6,000 = 60,000 + 6,000. Do not distribute the unmatched $6,000 across channels merely to make the chart complete.
An algorithmic attribution allocation remains a credit interpretation. This reconciliation alone does not establish the incremental sales that would disappear if a channel stopped.
Assign ownership before making a budget change. Marketing owns campaign mapping, analytics owns report settings, and finance owns the revenue bridge and cost definition. Put the remaining caveats into the campaign analysis report beside the proposed action.
Bring the attribution export, campaign cost file, and recorded sales summary; Covirage maps the columns, and its tools compute and check the supplied comparisons. The external AI model explains the results with every figure traced to its rows. Create a free Covirage account and bring a sample of your own data.
See sales insights for the supporting business context.
Google's current documentation says first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution were removed in November 2023. Keep historical exports labeled with their original method, and use currently supported methods for new comparisons.
Data-driven attribution can divide credit for a key event among several interactions. Fractional values represent allocated credit rather than fractional customers. Preserve the exported precision when summing channels, and round only the displayed result.
Google says reporting attribution changes affect event-scoped traffic dimensions, while user-scoped and session-scoped dimensions remain unaffected. Record the dimension scope with each export so that a comparison does not silently combine different definitions of acquisition.
It is a revenue-to-spend ratio. Marketing ROI also needs the costs of fulfilling the credited sales and the agreed marketing cost scope. A channel can have substantial credited revenue while contributing little after those costs.