The Attribution Fallacy

Every GTM team eventually discovers the same pattern:

Brand spend increases.
Pipeline rises months later.
Attribution models light up.

Conclusion:

“Brand drove revenue.”

It looks rigorous.
It feels empirical.
It is also incomplete.

Not because brand doesn’t matter, but because attribution systems are blind to the most powerful force in the market.

That force has a name.

The Category Spillover Coefficient (γ).

The Missing Variable

Most GTM models implicitly assume this equation:

ΔPipeline = Brand Activity + Content + Sales Execution + Noise

But real markets don’t work like that.

The correct equation looks more like:

ΔPᵢ = β·ΔBᵢ + γ·ΔC + ε

Where:

• β·ΔBᵢ = the impact of your brand activity

• γ·ΔC = category-level demand created upstream

• ε = execution variance and noise

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

In most markets, γ ≫ β.

Category movement overwhelms brand contribution, but attribution systems can only see β.

So they credit the wrong thing.

What γ Actually Represents

The Category Spillover Coefficient measures how much ambient demand exists in the market before your brand ever touches a buyer.

It captures:

• category awareness

• problem legitimacy

• executive urgency

• buyer readiness

• budget permission

In other words:

γ measures whether demand is already in the air.

Brand doesn’t create that air.
It benefits from it.

Why Brand Looks Like the Cause

Brand appears powerful because it is downstream-visible.

Category creation happens earlier, slower, and outside dashboards:

• language shifts

• mental models reorganize

• buyers stop defending the status quo

• budgets unlock

• solutions become “inevitable”

By the time brand messaging lands, the decision is already structurally enabled.

Brand becomes the last visible touch, and gets the credit.

This is not deception.

It’s a measurement artifact.

The Spillover Effect

Here’s where γ does its most damage to conventional thinking.

When a category leader invests upstream:

• the market learns

• buyers get educated

• urgency rises

• legitimacy spreads

That demand does not stay contained.

It spills over.

Followers experience pipeline lift without doing the causal work.

Attribution systems then report:

“Brand is suddenly working better.”

What’s actually happening:

They’re drafting behind someone else’s category gravity.

Why Late Movers Misread Their Own Success

This explains a familiar pattern:

• Company B increases brand spend

• Pipeline spikes

• Leadership declares brand ROI proven

• Spend scales

• Results plateau or collapse

Why?

Because γ was temporarily high due to category momentum created elsewhere.

Once spillover fades, β is revealed, and β alone cannot sustain growth.

Brand didn’t stop working.

γ just went back to zero.

Attribution’s Structural Blind Spot

Attribution systems cannot measure γ because:

• γ is collective, not individual

• γ forms before touchpoints exist

• γ operates at the worldview level

• γ has no timestamp

• γ belongs to the category, not the company

Dashboards answer:

“What happened near conversion?”

They cannot answer:

“What made conversion possible at all?”

That question lives outside attribution.

The Weather vs Climate Error (With γ Included)

Brand is weather.
Attribution tracks weather.

Category is climate.
γ is climate pressure.

When climate shifts, weather patterns change everywhere —
including over cities that did nothing to cause the shift.

Attribution then congratulates the cities.

This is the fallacy.

Why This Matters Now

In fast-moving, AI-accelerated markets:

• execution advantages compress

• channels saturate

• creative parity rises

What doesn’t compress?

• category definition

• problem legitimacy

• buyer worldview

• demand permission

Misreading γ causes teams to:

• overinvest in polish

• underinvest in category design

• celebrate correlation

• miss causality

• and scale the wrong lever

That’s how companies end up with immaculate brands and collapsing growth.

The Litmus Test

Next time someone says:

“Brand drove this pipeline.”

Ask:

“Was γ already positive when brand launched?”

If yes, you’re looking at spillover, not causation.

If no, and brand alone created demand, congratulations.

You just witnessed a miracle.

(They are very rare.)

The Quiet Conclusion

Brand is powerful inside a category.
It is fragile without one.

Attribution models don’t fail because they’re wrong.
They fail because γ never appears in the equation.

Until GTM teams learn to separate:

• what correlates
  from

• what creates

they will keep mistaking downstream signals for upstream forces.

And dashboards will continue to feel precise right up until they stop predicting reality.