Marketing Attribution Glossary
Every key term in marketing attribution, explained in plain language for Shopify merchants and marketers.
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CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including all marketing spend, sales costs, tools, and overhead divided by the number of new customers gained.
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Click-Through Conversion
A click-through conversion (CTC) occurs when a customer clicks on an ad and then completes a purchase within the attribution window.
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Conversions API (CAPI)
The Conversions API (CAPI) is Meta's server-side event tracking system that sends conversion data directly from your server to Meta, bypassing browser-based limitations like ad blockers and iOS privacy restrictions.
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CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) is a marketing metric that measures the average cost of acquiring one new customer through a specific advertising campaign or channel.
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Customer Journey
The customer journey is the complete sequence of marketing touchpoints and interactions a person has with your brand from initial discovery through to purchase and beyond.
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Last-Touch Attribution
Last-touch attribution is an attribution model that gives 100% of the conversion credit to the last marketing interaction before a customer converts.
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LTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) is the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account over the entire duration of their relationship.
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Meta Pixel
The Meta Pixel is a JavaScript snippet installed on your website that tracks visitor actions and sends event data to Meta (Facebook/Instagram) to measure ad performance and build audiences.
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Multi-Touch Attribution
Multi-touch attribution is a measurement approach that distributes conversion credit across multiple marketing touchpoints in the customer journey rather than assigning it all to a single interaction.
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UTM Parameters
UTM parameters are tags added to the end of a URL that tell analytics tools exactly where traffic came from, which campaign sent it, and what type of marketing drove the click.
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utm_campaign
utm_campaign is a UTM parameter that identifies the specific marketing campaign, promotion, or initiative that a link belongs to, such as spring-sale-2026 or bfcm-retargeting.
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utm_medium
utm_medium is a UTM parameter that identifies the marketing channel type used to deliver traffic, such as cpc (paid search), email, social, or organic.
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utm_source
utm_source is a UTM parameter that identifies which platform, website, or publisher sent traffic to your store, such as facebook, google, or newsletter.
Put these terms into action
Detectly tracks every UTM, attributes every Shopify order, and shows you which channels actually drive revenue.