Google announced that it would deprecate non-last-click rules-based attribution ****** in Google Ads and Google Analytics starting in June 2023 and then completely by September 2023. Google said first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution ****** are going away.

Data-driven attribution (DDA) is now recommended and last-click will remain available, Google added.

“Rules-based attribution ****** assign value to each advertising touchpoint based on predefined rules. These ****** don’t provide the flexibility needed to adapt to evolving consumer journeys,” Google explained. Google said this is why they made data-driven attribution the default attribution model in Google Ads and Google Analytics 4. “It uses Google AI to understand the impact each touchpoint has on a conversion, and when combined with auto bidding, data-driven attribution improves performance. Data-driven attribution is now the most-used attribution model for conversions used for automated bidding in Google Ads, resulting in a decline in the overall use of rules-based model,” Google added.

Google said that less than 3% of Google Ads web conversions are attributed using first click, linear, time decay, or position-based ******.

In July 2023 first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution ****** across Google Ads and Google Analytics 4 will be going away.

Starting in June 2023, Google will remove the ability to select first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution ****** for conversion actions in Google Ads that do not already use one of these ******.

Starting in September 2023, Google will switch any conversion actions still using these ****** to data-driven attribution. So if you don’t want your conversions to use data-driven attribution, you will be able to use the last click model. At this point, these rules-based ****** will also be removed from reporting throughout the rest of Google Ads, including the Overview page and the Model comparison report within the Attribution tab, Google added.

Google Analytics will also be sunsetting first-click, linear, time-decay and position-based attribution ****** from the attribution reports, property-level reporting-model setting, and Admin API. Starting in May, newly created properties will no longer be able to select these ******. Starting in September, we will sunset these ****** for all other properties. Cross-channel data-driven attribution, cross-channel last click, and Ads preferred last click will continue to be available.

Rules-based attribution ****** assign value to each advertising touchpoint based on predefined rules. These ****** don’t provide the flexibility needed to adapt to evolving consumer journeys. Data-driven attribution uses advanced AI to understand the impact each touchpoint has on a conversion. That’s why we made data-driven attribution the default attribution model in Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads. For these reasons, first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution ****** across Google Analytics 4 will be going away.

Here are the tweets on this from Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liason.

Today we announced we’ll be deprecating non-last-click rules-based attribution ******, which includes first-click, linear, positioned based & time decay, in Google Ads & GA4.

Data-driven attribution (DDA) is recommended & last-click will remain available.

More on why & timing:

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) April 6, 2023

Timing:
– Time decay, position-based, linear and first-click attribution ****** will no longer be available to new conversion actions in GA4 starting in May and in Google Ads starting in June.
– They’ll begin to sunset in Google Ads and GA4 in September.https://t.co/8Q7CzxZ2nR

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) April 6, 2023

Forum discussion at Twitter.