So my team migrated from a big-name attribution platform to a home-grown model in Google Sheets. The old platform was a black box, expensive, and the data never quite matched our internal events.
Our simple model just uses first-touch UTM parameters from our analytics pipeline. We ingest the data, apply some basic logic in a Python script (running in a Lambda), and output to a sheet. It's not fancy, but it's transparent.
```python
# Simplified version of our attribution logic
def assign_attribution(event):
if event['session_number'] == 1:
return event['utm_source']
else:
return 'Returning User'
```
Now we can all see and debate the logic. For our small SaaS, knowing which channel *starts* conversations is 90% of what we need. Has anyone else gone "back to basics" like this? Did you miss the cross-device stuff, or was the clarity worth it?