Which attribution model is best for India CTV advertising campaigns?

Four attribution models are used for India CTV: (1) Last-touch — credits the final touchpoint before conversion. Since CTV ads cannot be clicked, last-touch rarely credits CTV directly — the last measurable touch is usually a search click or mobile app open. CTV’s contribution is invisible in last-touch models. (2) View-through attribution (VTA) — credits CTV exposure if a conversion occurs within a defined window (typically 24 hours to 14 days) after the ad plays, regardless of intervening touchpoints. VTA over-credits CTV because it cannot distinguish causal influence from coincidence. (3) Multi-touch attribution (MTA) — distributes credit across all touchpoints weighted by their modelled contribution. Requires cross-device linking to include CTV in the model. (4) Incrementality / holdout testing — measures the true causal lift by comparing exposed vs unexposed groups. The most accurate but most operationally complex.

For brand-building CTV campaigns (awareness, consideration): use brand lift measurement (Nielsen, Kantar) as the primary metric rather than conversion attribution. Brand lift measures recall, awareness, and intent change directly from a surveyed sample of exposed vs control audiences — the right tool for upper-funnel objectives. Supplementary: view-through attribution with a short window (3–7 days) as a directional signal for brand-search lift. For performance-oriented CTV campaigns (app install, site visit): use incrementality (holdout test) as the primary evaluation; use view-through attribution with a 24-hour window as a secondary indicator. Do not use last-touch for CTV — it will systematically zero out CTV’s contribution and lead to under-investment in what is actually a reach-building channel.

View-through attribution for India CTV: the DSP records a CTV impression against a specific device ID at a timestamp. If that device ID (or a cross-device matched ID from the same household) takes a tracked action — visits the advertiser’s website, opens the mobile app, completes a purchase — within the VTA window, the conversion is attributed to the CTV campaign. The window length determines how much credit CTV receives: a 1-day window is conservative; a 30-day window is generous and will over-credit CTV in longer consideration cycles. India CTV VTA setup requires: (a) the DSP to have a cross-device graph linking CTV and mobile IDs in the same household; (b) the advertiser’s conversion tracking pixel to be accessible on the post-conversion destination; (c) agreement with the DSP on window length and fractional credit weighting.