Marketers are sharpening their pitchforks again, and this time, affiliate marketing is in the crosshairs. It’s not the first time. The industry has a long history of raising eyebrows and causing headaches, and today’s attribution landscape is like a poorly rigged carnival game. Everyone’s claiming to win, but no one’s sure who actually earned it.

Let’s rewind to Dr. Augustine Fou’s 2020 warning about affiliate fraud. Back then, he called out how affiliate marketing was ripping off performance marketers with tactics that would make even the most seasoned grifters blush. 

Fast forward to today, and Thomas B. Leonard isn’t pulling punches. His takedown of the Honey app paints it as Exhibit A in the scammy world of attribution—a prime example of how performance marketing has gone off the rails. Honey’s strategy? Leveraging last-click attribution, a system that rewards the app for being the last thing a customer interacts with before making a purchase, even if it did nothing to drive the sale. Leonard calls out the broader implications of this approach, saying:

"Pretty much all of performance marketing has devolved into a game of attribution because performance marketers and more and more finance teams have been conditioned—mainly by Google and Meta… to care about 'did this action occur after an ad was served,' which is not the same as 'did this ad cause an action to occur.'"

This isn’t just some oversight or technical loophole—it’s a deliberate feature baked into the system. Honey’s approach epitomizes a troubling trend where tools, platforms, and apps are rewarded not for their actual impact but for their ability to claim credit. By gaming attribution systems, Honey can take a commission on sales it had little to no role in influencing, leaving marketers to explain away inflated ROAS metrics that don’t align with actual performance.

The problem isn’t limited to Honey. It’s a microcosm of the performance marketing industry as a whole, where attribution tactics have turned into a race to the bottom. Last-click attribution has become a weapon of choice for platforms, apps, and even ad networks looking to inflate their value. Marketers, meanwhile, are stuck in a cycle of chasing numbers that don’t reflect real customer acquisition or business growth.

As Leonard points out, this isn’t just about Honey or affiliate marketing—it’s about the broader failure of the system to distinguish causation from correlation. Did the ad actually drive the action, or did it just happen to show up before the customer made a purchase they were already going to make? Increasingly, the answer doesn’t seem to matter to platforms that profit from the illusion of performance.

Enter David Rodnitzky, who perfectly encapsulates this mess with his branding of the “Three Horsemen of Attribution”: affiliate marketing, branded search, and retargeting. 

These three tactics have become staples of the performance marketing playbook, but their effectiveness often hinges more on clever attribution than genuine impact.

Take retargeting, for instance—the clingy ex of marketing strategies. It’s everywhere, relentlessly sending ads to someone who abandoned their cart as if spamming them into submission will suddenly make them buy. 

Did the customer finally cave after being chased by 17 versions of the same ad?

 Or were they planning to buy anyway and just needed time to think? 

Who cares—retargeting will take credit for the sale either way. And marketers? They’re left footing the bill for every single impression.

Branded search isn’t much better, often existing to capture traffic from customers who were already going to buy. It’s like setting up a tollbooth on a road you don’t own, charging people for a journey they were already making. And while affiliate marketing promises to expand reach and drive incremental growth, it often devolves into little more than a glorified commission system for conversions that would’ve happened regardless.

The big picture is grim: performance marketing has become a game of attribution hot potato, with every player—from Honey to Google to ad agencies—scrambling to grab credit without creating real value. As Leonard and Rodnitzky point out, it’s a system ripe for abuse, where the tools designed to measure success are increasingly disconnected from the actual drivers of business growth. Marketers who play along might see their dashboards light up with impressive ROAS metrics, but when it comes time to justify their budgets, the numbers often don’t hold water.

Let’s not forget PMax, Google’s Frankenstein creation, which Matt Butler describes as the ultimate attribution sniper. PMax blends branded search, retargeting, junk inventory, and YouTube traffic into one big black box of “performance.” But here’s the kicker: Google’s apps—Maps, Gmail, YouTube—all generate click IDs, meaning every tap is magically credited to your ad. As Butler notes:

"If you’re on your way to a store and use Maps to get directions, PMax can claim that conversion just because you clicked the pin. Boom, in-app activity, also a PMax 'interaction.'"

So, what’s the alternative? Yuli Shumsky of Canadian Tire offers a bold suggestion:

"Stop targeting people who are already likely to buy. Instead, show your ads to people who’ve never heard of your brand."

 

Radical, right? But it’s the kind of shake-up performance marketing desperately needs. Meanwhile, Cher Window cuts through the noise, pointing out the real issue:

"Too much time is spent optimizing measurable metrics like ROAS and CPAs at the expense of long-term brand-building efforts."

 

And Stuart Briscar of Blue Burst Media raises an important question: How do we measure incrementality in a media mix this chaotic? Incrementality, unlike attribution, asks the tough question: Did the ad cause the sale? Attribution, on the other hand, is just about claiming credit.

Incrementality-based measurement is the holy grail marketers need to chase. As Leonard points out, platforms have conditioned us to prioritize "did this action occur after an ad was served?" instead of "did this ad cause an action to occur?" It’s a crucial distinction, but one most marketers have been too afraid—or too overwhelmed—to address.

Incrementality studies, while far from perfect, are the lifeline performance marketing desperately needs. Sure, they’re harder to implement than the quick-and-dirty metrics marketers have been spoon-fed for years. They require disciplined testing, collaboration across multiple channels, and a willingness to face some uncomfortable truths. But without them, the entire ecosystem devolves into an attribution circus—a chaotic mess where every platform stakes a claim to the same win, leaving marketers with a distorted view of reality.

Matt Butler encapsulates the absurdity of it all:

"If your performance dashboard says you’re driving 30 sales, but your client’s internal numbers show only 10 units sold, you’ve got a bigger problem than just attribution errors."

And he’s right. That discrepancy isn’t a rounding error or a minor hiccup—it’s a flashing neon sign that the attribution system is broken. Performance dashboards, designed to make marketers look like rockstars, are often nothing more than smoke and mirrors when they fail to reflect actual business outcomes.

Affiliate marketing might be the poster child for these issues, but let’s not pretend it’s the only culprit. The entire performance marketing ecosystem is guilty. PMax, Google’s latest attribution juggernaut, is engineered to hoover up credit for any possible conversion. Branded search campaigns claim success for traffic that was already coming your way. Even CTV platforms are sneaking their way into Google Analytics, inflating their impact and muddying the waters further.

The result? Marketers are chasing phantom wins—metrics that look great in a slide deck but do little to drive real, sustainable growth. The more platforms game the system, the harder it becomes to separate cause from coincidence, leaving marketers to justify inflated budgets for campaigns that aren’t delivering true ROI.

It’s time to take a long, hard look at how success is measured. Incrementality-based measurement is no silver bullet, but it’s the only tool we have to cut through the noise. It forces marketers to confront the uncomfortable but necessary question: Did this ad actually cause the action? Incrementality doesn’t care about who got the last click or whose banner ad happened to be on-screen when the purchase was made. It demands proof of causation—not correlation—and that’s exactly what’s missing from the current playbook.

Still, embracing incrementality isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s messy. It requires marketers to break out of their silos and coordinate across channels. It means letting go of the comforting illusion that every dollar spent is a dollar earned. But the payoff? A clearer understanding of what’s working and what’s not.

As Rohit Maheswaran so aptly put it:

"It’s time to take attribution to the back of the shed."

Because here’s the hard truth: attribution charades aren’t just misleading—they’re actively harmful. They inflate budgets, distort strategies, and waste time. The more marketers cling to these hollow metrics, the further they drift from their ultimate goal: driving actual growth.

So, what’s it going to be? Keep spinning the wheel of attribution, hoping it lands in your favor? Or start asking the tough questions about what’s truly delivering value? One thing’s certain: marketers are tired of paying for performance that doesn’t perform. It’s time for the industry to step up, embrace incrementality, and rebuild trust—not just in the numbers but in the strategies behind them.

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