• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 11, 2015

While top brands have been slow to evolve, they insist that the days of last-touch attribution are numbered. The Home Depot is a case in point. Though it's still stuck in last-touch limbo, that’s finally changing, according to Sean Kainec, Senior Manager of Search Engine Optimization at the home improvement giant. “You have to go back to the first touch,” Kainec told attendees of MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit, on Thursday.

Yet, properly attributing sales have never been more complex, Kainec admits. “We’re looking at something like 200 connections with a customer,” he said. Among countless other potential leads, “It could have been a tweet that you came out with.”

Backing up his fellow panelist, Omer Navaid, Manager of Acquisition Marketing at Cars.com said he “totally” agreed with the need to adopt more sophisticated attribution.