The brand. An anonymized Indian D2C wellness & nutrition brand — a ~160-SKU catalog anchored by one flagship functional beverage, selling on Shopify, acquiring through paid social and search.

The window. Two consecutive 30-day periods: a baseline month, then a month of deliberate change. ~4,000 → ~6,300 orders.

The problem. Last-click attribution told a clean story that happened to be wrong: paid social looked like a money-loser at 0.89 ROAS, while search looked like the hero at 5.16. Followed literally, that reasoning says cut social, pour everything into search — and starve the channel actually generating demand.

The approach. Instead of letting one number drive a strategic decision, the team ran two measurement layers side by side. A media-mix model (causal, account-level) answered the strategic questions — where should the money go, and is there room to add more? Click-based multi-touch attribution (granular, near real-time) answered the tactical ones — which creative, which campaign, which budget, today? This case study is what that division of labour produced.