How Attribution Works
Attribution is simply the act of giving credit to the ad or campaign that earned a customer. Behind the scenes, Signal Sparrow does it by connecting three moments into one story.
The three pieces
Every attributed sale is a join of these:
- The click — when a visitor arrives, the SDK notes where they came from (the ad, campaign, or link). This comes from the click IDs and UTM tags in their link.
- The identity — when the visitor tells you who they are, you identify them with their email. This ties their anonymous visits to a real person.
- The conversion — later, that person pays in Stripe. Signal Sparrow reads the payment and matches it back to the original click.
Put together:
Clicked a Google ad → browsed your site → signed up (you identify them) → paid in Stripe → credited to Google
A quick example
| Moment | What Signal Sparrow records |
|---|---|
| Sam clicks your LinkedIn ad | "This visit came from LinkedIn" |
Sam signs up — you call identify('sam@acme.com') | Sam's visits are now tied to Sam |
| Two weeks later, Sam's subscription starts in Stripe | Payment matched back to that LinkedIn ad |
| You open your dashboard | "LinkedIn earned a paying customer worth $X" |
When a sale can't be traced
Sometimes there's no click to connect a payment to — maybe the visitor was never identified, arrived offline, or blocked all tracking. Those sales are labeled direct/unknown. They're not errors; they're an honest "we couldn't trace this one." You'll learn how they fit the totals in Reconciliation & Match Rate.
Most untraced sales come down to two missed steps: not identifying users, and not tagging your own links with UTMs. Nail those two and your credit gets dramatically more complete.
Next
- Attribution Models — choose how credit is shared across multiple touches
- Reconciliation & Match Rate