Attribution

Three tracking systems with genuinely overlapping names. The distinction that actually matters: one system is only for this centre's own paid billboard; the other two are for every other kind of advertising.

The centre's own first-party system, billboard only

This centre's own attribution tool gives you real insight into how your own paid billboard performs, down to the order, the location, the group and even the individual word. It uses only the centre's own first-party data, and it has genuinely no information at all about whether someone saw or tapped an advertisement anywhere outside the centre itself.

Word-level credit is the significant part. No other measurement on this platform gives you that at all, and it's exactly what makes the whole word-harvesting loop possible in the first place. It works because the same centre owns both the billboard and the shopfront. This is genuine first-party measurement, not tracking someone across separate parties.

The two systems for everyone else

One was this platform's first privacy-preserving attribution system, built on the anonymity of a large crowd rather than tracking any one individual.

A newer system lets registered ad networks and shop owners credit a real walk-in or a return visit to a campaign, through a signed signal from the centre itself, deliberately limiting what comes back in that signal. And it builds directly on the older system's own foundations.

For advertising running on outside platforms entirely, the centre offers this newer system specifically.

Both of these deliberately limit what actually comes back to you: delayed, grouped-together, deliberately coarse signals rather than anything at the level of one individual person.

They work together, on the billboard specifically

For its own paid billboard, you can genuinely use both of the first two systems at once: the centre's own first-party tool, and its own newer, privacy-preserving system.

So for the billboard specifically, you can have both: rich first-party data through the centre's own tool, and the privacy-preserving signal path through the newer system. They will not agree with each other, because they measure things differently, over different windows of time. That's expected, not a flaw, and it's worth stating plainly in any report that quotes numbers from both.

The windows

The billboard's own reporting credits a tap-based walk-in within a genuinely generous window, and a glance-based one within a much shorter window, and both of those include people coming back as well as brand-new visitors.

These windows are not what your own outside measurement partner uses, and neither one matches the newer system's own signal timing either. Three systems, three genuinely different answers, all individually defensible. Pick one as your official number, say clearly which one it is, and stop trying to force the others to agree with it.

What this actually means in practice

The billboard's own numbers will usually come in higher than your outside measurement partner's. Different windows, people coming back included, glance-based credit counted too. The gap between them is structural, not a mistake.

Don't average across the different systems. Choose whichever system is your official record for each specific decision: the centre's own tool for optimising words and orders inside the billboard itself; your outside measurement partner for comparing across every channel at once; the newer signal-based system for any network that genuinely can't see inside the shopfront itself.

Always say exactly which system a number actually came from. Every single time. An unlabelled walk-in figure starts an argument that can never actually be resolved.

What tends to go wrong

Expecting the billboard's own numbers and your outside partner's numbers to match. They genuinely cannot.

Comparing the billboard's own cost figure to another network's without noting which system measured each one.

Treating the centre's own first-party tool as available for advertising that isn't the centre's own billboard. First-party only, and billboard-only.

Mixing glance-based and tap-based credit into one single figure across different locations. Genuinely different-length windows.

Reporting walk-ins without separating out brand-new ones. People coming back are included in the total.