Multi touch attribution, aka multi channel attribution, is a method that gives credit to other touch points of a user who downloads a mobile app. In traditional attribution methods including last click attribution, first click attribution, and view-through attribution, all the ad credit goes to one ad source. 

The main problem with that approach is the accuracy of the credited channel because of complexity of a user’s journey. Mostly, users decide on downloading an app after being exposed to more than one marketing channels like ads, influencers, offline events, etc. 

Giving all the credit to a single source prevents mobile marketers and mobile advertisers to understand the true performance of other channels. Multi touch attribution tries to fix this problem by distributing credit to more than one channel even if they are offline or omni-channel.  This helps advertisers to allocate budget accordingly and it also helps ad networks to be credited if the user went through on the customer journey.