Research, analysis, and strategic commentary on marketing attribution, AI search visibility, and data-driven performance. Published by Arcalea practitioners with active client work in each area.
Arcalea tracked 40 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude to measure which M7 business schools appear in AI-generated answers to MBA applicant queries. The composite scores reveal a 9-point gap between the top three and the bottom four, plus a platform-level split no one saw coming.
73 prompts. 247 AI responses. 15 surrogacy agencies tracked. Arcalea's surrogacy AEO Index reveals a fundamental split: of 15 agencies in the index, exactly one wins on both Google and AI. Every other agency is winning on one channel and losing on the other.
62 prompts. 21 distributors. The largest private plumbing distributor in the US operates under 60-plus regional trade names, and AI engines have no idea who they are. Arcalea's commercial distribution index documents the entity fragmentation problem hiding inside the industry's market structure.
Six global practitioners. Twelve expert-backed predictions across digital infrastructure, data architecture, AI governance, agentic workflows, and ROI frameworks. Download the D2A2 2026 Insights Report to see where enterprise leaders are placing their bets.
The three disciplines that determine which brands get cited by AI engines versus which get ignored. A structural overview of how authority is built in the AI search era.
Google searches are ending without a click at the fastest rate SparkToro has ever recorded. This piece breaks down what's driving it, why clicks-and-sessions reporting is measuring a shrinking surface, and the three additions that make an organic measurement framework accurate again
Marketing attribution is the framework for determining which touchpoints contributed to a conversion and how much credit each deserves. The model you choose determines which channels get funded, which quietly disappear from your plan because their contributions are invisible in the data.
Marketing attribution has become the central measurement challenge of modern digital marketing. The fragmentation of customer journeys across devices, platforms, and AI-mediated touchpoints means single-touch models misattribute conversions in over 60% of multi-step paths. Here is what the current data shows.
B2B attribution fails when organizations apply B2C logic to enterprise sales. This guide covers how to select the right multi-touch model, configure HubSpot or Salesforce to capture account-level data, measure marketing credit at every pipeline stage, and map the buying committee in ABM programs.
Expected Value of Perfect Information (EVPI) is a financial framework that quantifies the maximum value an organization could create by eliminating uncertainties in key business decisions. Learn how to apply it to justify attribution investments.
Understand when last-click attribution works, its critical limitations, and how to use it responsibly alongside other attribution models.
Marketing attribution distributes conversion credit across the touchpoints in a customer journey. There are 7 primary attribution models in use today, from first-touch to algorithmic data-driven, each producing meaningfully different channel ROI numbers from the same underlying data.
Learn how to measure marketing impact in a cookieless world. Discover strategies for first-party attribution that don't rely on third-party cookies.
GA4's Data-Driven Attribution model uses machine learning to assign conversion credit across touchpoints, a meaningful step beyond last-click. But it has real constraints that affect how reliable its outputs are for budget decisions. Here is what marketing and analytics teams need to understand before relying on it.
Single-touch attribution models assign all conversion credit to one touchpoint and fail to capture today's complex, multi-channel customer journeys spanning 4 to 38 touchpoints across devices and platforms.
Modern customers encounter 20+ touchpoints across multiple channels before converting. Multi-touch attribution distributes credit across all interactions, revealing true channel value and enabling data-driven budget optimization.
Weekly. Opinionated. For people who make decisions with data.