Question: If your business has a short buying cycle, which attribution model should you use?
- First and last
- First-touch
- Linear
- Simple decay
Explanation
A decay-based attribution model gives more credit to the most recent touchpoints before a conversion. In HubSpot, that model weights the final interactions more heavily instead of splitting credit evenly across the entire path. That makes it a strong fit when the buying cycle is short, because the latest interactions usually have the most direct influence on the outcome. It is more useful here than models that give all credit to discovery or distribute credit evenly across every step. HubSpot Blog+1
Why the other options are incorrect
First and last This splits credit between the first and last interactions, so it does not emphasize the most recent touches strongly enough for a short path to conversion. HubSpot Blog
First-touch This gives all credit to the first interaction, which overweights discovery and ignores the later interactions that pushed the conversion. HubSpot Knowledge Base
Linear This assigns equal credit to every interaction, so it is less useful when recent touchpoints should carry more weight than earlier ones. HubSpot Knowledge Base+1
Source for verification
https://knowledge.hubspot.com/reports/understand-attribution-reporting
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-google-analytics-glossary
The answer(s) to the question is highlighted in the BOLD text above. You can also find more questions and answers related to the exams on the "HubSpot Digital Advertising" page.