Imagine you and your marketing team created a social media advertising campaign that you thought would be a smash hit, driving scores of customers to buy the latest version of a product. You launch the campaign, track lots of people viewing the ads on their phones, but then see those views just aren’t converting to sales.
“We failed!” you might think with dismay. But, what if lots of the people you reached on a mobile device turned to their computers to do a bit more research, then went ahead with a purchase? Your ads worked, but because you weren’t tracking user activity beyond their phones, you never knew it.
“The user journey consists of many different touchpoints,” says Josh Silverbauer, CRO at From The Future. “In 2025’s shopping landscape, people routinely switch between devices — from phone to laptop to tablet — as naturally as moving from dining table to sofa. The single-device, single-browser tracking model has long lost its accuracy. This is why implementing a tracking architecture that can connect user data across devices is crucial.”
Here’s what you should know about cross-device attribution.
What is Cross-Device Attribution?
You have to track your users far and wide if you want actionable data about their consumer habits, and that means looking at all of their touchpoints.
“Cross-device attribution tracks how a single user moves between devices before taking action,” says Alex Smith, manager and co-owner of Render3DQuick. “Someone might see a display ad on their phone in the morning, compare service options on a tablet later in the day, and submit a quote request on their work desktop the next morning.”
“If each step looks like a different user, you lose the connection between cause and effect,” Smith adds. “It becomes harder to pinpoint which channel actually influenced the conversion. In performance marketing, that disconnect leads to inaccurate reporting and weakens your ability to make smart decisions about where to invest.”
How It Works
Cross-device attribution helps marketers understand a customer’s journey across multiple devices and platforms by linking their interactions. It achieves this by associating a unique identifier with each user, which enables tracking of their behavior even when they switch devices. This allows for a more holistic view of user behavior and provides more accurate performance tracking of marketing campaigns.
Unique identifiers like account logins, device IDs, or other methods allow marketers to recognize the same user across different devices and platforms. There are two main approaches: deterministic and probabilistic, which are explained below.
Benefits of Cross-Device Attribution
“Cross-device attribution uncovers the complete buyer’s journey,” says Amra Beganovich, founder of e-commerce brand Colorful Socks. “A customer might encounter our ad on Instagram while scrolling on a phone, open an email later on a tablet, and complete a purchase on a desktop. Without cross-device tracking, we would attribute the sale to the last click, and miss the earlier touchpoints that had played a role in the sale.”
Complete View of the Customer Journey
Cross-device attribution provides a holistic view of a customer’s journey across myriad platforms and devices, showing how users engage with a brand as a complete picture.
Touchpoint Value Analysis
Not all touchpoints are of equal value for all customers or for all types of advertising media. Cross-device attribution lets you see what is working best on mobile, on desktop, on tablets, and beyond. You can get a sense of what ads convert best with various users across different platforms.
Improved Message Targeting
By better understanding customer behavior across devices, marketers can tailor their messaging and offers to individual users and their specific needs and preferences.
Ad Fatigue Prevention
When customers are hit with the same (or similar) ads over and over again, they can backfire, driving people away from a brand. By creating ads tailored properly for each touchpoint, businesses can avoid placing repetitive ads on multiple platforms, reducing ad fatigue and increasing engagement.
Challenges/Limitations of Cross-Device Attribution
As with all facets of marketing (and life in general), there are always challenges to effective cross-device attribution, but if you know what to watch out for, you can minimize them.
Privacy Concerns
Any form of tracking a person can create both legal and ethical concerns. You need to make sure you are not violating any laws, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) or the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). Keep in mind that some people choose to protect their privacy online, such as by using tracker-blocking browser extensions, which can make it harder for you to keep tabs on them.
Data Gaps
It is essentially impossible to track the entirety of a person’s online activity, so even with best practices in place, you still might miss some of the touchpoints of a user. You have to account for that as you analyze your data and acknowledge potential blindspots.
Resources
While you can automate a fair amount of cross-device attribution practices, implementing and maintaining cross-device attribution systems requires significant technical expertise, resources, and some ongoing hands-on management.
Best Practices
“Cross-device attribution matters because your dream clients are real people navigating real life — they’re scrolling on their phones between school drop-offs, checking emails on laptops during lunch breaks, and watching replays on tablets at night,” says Sophie Musumeci, founder of Real Entrepreneur Women. To be sure you don’t let a lead slip away, follow these best practices for cross-device attribution.
Establish Your Objectives
Clearly define what you want to achieve with your cross-device attribution efforts, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving conversions, or improving customer retention. Then, set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your progress.
Map Out the Customer Journey
As you collect data, consider touchpoints within the wider context. Map out many individual customer journeys, from awareness through to conversion and across platforms, so you can identify and study trends.
Utilize Multiple Attribution Models
Explore different attribution models like last-click, first-click, linear, time decay, and position-based models to see which best reflects your audience’s journey. Consider using a mix of attribution models to gain a more comprehensive understanding of customer behavior.
What Are the Attribution Models Used in Cross-Device Attribution?
As briefly noted above, there are two primary cross-device attribution models. Let’s take a closer look at each of them now.
Deterministic Attribution
This approach relies on specific identifiers to link a user’s activity across different devices. For example, if a user is logged into their Google account on their phone and computer, the system can track their activity on both devices. The benefit of a deterministic model is that it’s usually more accurate and precise. That said, this approach relies on having access to specific identifiers, which may not always be available or privacy-compliant.
Probabilistic Attribution
When direct identifiers are not available, probabilistic models use a broader range of data points to estimate the likelihood of a match. This might involve analyzing IP addresses, Wi-Fi networks, device types, location data, and online behavior patterns. Probabilistic models are useful when deterministic identifiers are unavailable, allowing for a more comprehensive view of user behavior across devices. But, keep in mind that this approach is less precise than deterministic modeling, and may sometimes produce incorrect data.
How Can First-Party Data Be Leveraged for Better Cross-Device Attribution?
As well as being less subject to wide-ranging privacy laws than third-party data, first-party data can significantly improve cross-device attribution by providing a more accurate and reliable view of customer interactions across different devices. By leveraging data collected directly from customers through your own channels, like websites and apps, you can gain a clearer picture of their journey and can attribute conversions more precisely. This leads to better insights into campaign performance, improved targeting, and more effective marketing strategies.
Realize leverages Taboola's extensive first-party data from powering publisher editorial and ad units, providing unmatched insights and targeting capabilities.
Key Takeaways
“Cross-device attribution is really about connecting the dots,” says Brian Kroeker, president of Little Rock Printing. “For example, from a customer first engaging with an Instagram ad on their phone, to browsing a site later on a tablet, to them completing a purchase later on a desktop. Without the right attribution in place, you risk giving credit to the last touchpoint while ignoring all the earlier ones that influenced the sale.”
Or, on the other hand, you might miss a conversion and think your marketing efforts were unsuccessful. Proper cross-device attribution creates a full picture of the customer journey. It can make your ad spend more effective, improving return on investment (ROI), as well as helping with audience segmentation and targeting, and providing you with a wealth of data to analyze and act on.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What does cross-device attribution mean?
“Cross-device attribution is the process of understanding and tracking customer interactions across multiple devices and touchpoints in their buying journey,” says Michael Capote, CMO of German Car Depot. “Since customers are now moving between multiple devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and smart TVs for their daily activities, it’s important to track their entire journey to achieve effective marketing measurement and optimization.”
How can cross-device attribution help with frequency capping across devices?
Cross-device attribution helps with frequency capping across devices by allowing advertisers to understand and track user interactions across multiple platforms. This information can help marketers implement a more comprehensive frequency cap that applies across all devices associated with a user. That way, users won’t see the same ad multiple times on different devices within the same household or user profile, which can otherwise cause ad fatigue.
What tools and technologies are used for cross-device attribution?
Cross-device attribution uses a variety of tools and technologies to track user behavior and attribution across different devices. Key tools include attribution platforms, data management platforms, and analytics tools from Google Analytics, Ruler Analytics Limited, HubSpot, Dreamdata, Adobe Analytics, and other companies.
How does cross-device attribution differ from single-device attribution?
Cross-device attribution focuses on tracking a customer’s journey across multiple devices like phones, tablets, and computers, while single-device attribution only tracks interactions on a single device. Cross-device attribution offers a more complete view of the customer journey toward conversion, and allows for a more accurate assessment of campaign performance. Single-device attribution, on the other hand, may miss key touchpoints and provide an incomplete picture of the customer’s behavior.
