Myth: a longer customer journey means your funnel is working harder

Myth: a longer customer journey means your funnel is working harder

The question: when your multi-touch attribution (MTA — crediting every touch on the path, not just the last) report shows 7-9 touchpoints per conversion, is that a sign of a healthy, well-orchestrated funnel?

What the data shows: path-length distributions are heavily confounded by who you measure. Studies of cookie-based path data consistently find that longer observed paths correlate with higher-intent users, not with more persuasion. People who were always going to convert tend to interact more — they search your brand, click the retargeting ad, open the email. The touches are downstream of intent, not the cause of it.

The nuance: there is also a measurement artifact. Identity resolution improves for engaged users (more logins, more device overlap), so their paths look longer simply because you can see more of them. Sparse paths often belong to users you tracked poorly, not users you persuaded efficiently.

So a rising average path length can mean three different things — more persuasion, more self-selected high-intent traffic, or better tracking of engaged users — and the report cannot distinguish them.

Bottom line for practitioners: do not optimize toward 'more touches.' Segment path length by pre-exposure intent (new vs. returning, branded vs. non-branded entry) before drawing any conclusion, and validate the persuasive value of mid-path channels with holdout tests rather than counting interactions.