Every other report in TrackIQ credits a sale to one campaign. **Path to Purchase** shows the whole sequence — every ad format a customer was exposed to, in order, before they bought.

It is the only dashboard that can tell you whether your formats are working **together** or simply taking turns claiming the same customer.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-ptp-explainer-ee3854cb.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? Eighty-one seconds on reading the NTB column instead of the sales column.*

## **The headline numbers**

![Paths analysed, converted users, total sales and NTB purchase share](/kb-assets/shot-b27-ptp-top-7fa12d.png)

Two controls sit above: **Paths Include** (all ad formats, or only paths containing one) and **Ranked By** (Sales, and the other measures).

| Tile | Reads |
|---|---|
| **Paths Analyzed** | distinct conversion journeys |
| **Converted Users** | customers who purchased after exposure |
| **Total Sales** | revenue driven across all paths |
| **NTB Purchase Share** | how much of it was new-to-brand |

Fifty-odd distinct journeys is normal. Most of the volume lives in the top five.

## **Best Performing Paths**

> *Top 5 conversion paths ranked by the metric you choose — each row shows the campaign-type sequence customers followed before buying.*

Each row is a sequence of chips ending in **Purchase**, with sales, purchases, NTB sales, NTB purchases and path sales % beneath it.

![The top five paths, ranked by sales](/kb-assets/shot-b27-ptp-mid-efad9d.png)

## **Read the NTB column, not the sales column**

The paths ranked highest by revenue are frequently the worst at acquiring anybody. A representative month:

| # | Path | Purchases | NTB purchases | NTB rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DSP → SP → Purchase | 2,141 | 304 | **14%** |
| 2 | SP → Purchase | 2,452 | 2,262 | **92%** |
| 3 | SP → DSP → Purchase | 1,303 | 879 | 67% |
| 4 | DSP → SP → SB → Purchase | 890 | 133 | **15%** |
| 5 | SP → SB → Purchase | 1,005 | 915 | 91% |

The pattern is unmistakable once you sort by it: **paths that begin with DSP are almost entirely repeat customers. Paths that begin with Sponsored Products are almost entirely new ones.**

That is the opposite of the textbook, where display is the top of the funnel. It is what happens when a DSP buy is weighted toward **remarketing and retargeting** — those audiences are built from people who have already visited your pages, so DSP appears *first* in the path only because it re-reached somebody the brand already knew. See **DSP Campaigns**.

**The path order tells you what your DSP is for.** DSP appearing first on high-NTB paths would mean genuine prospecting. DSP appearing first on low-NTB paths means it is finding people you already have.

## **Single-touch beats multi-touch more often than you'd think**

Path 2 — one format, straight to purchase — produced more purchases than path 1 and eight times the new customers.

This is worth saying plainly because multi-touch paths *look* more sophisticated. Before concluding that DSP "assisted" path 1, ask the harder question: **would those 2,141 purchases have happened anyway?** Path 2 suggests many of them would. The DSP exposure may be a cost added to a sale that was already coming.

The paths where multi-touch genuinely earns its place are the ones where the **added** format brings a materially better NTB rate than the same path without it. Compare path 3 (67% NTB) against path 2 (92%): adding DSP after SP made the journey *less* acquisitive here, not more.

## **The methodology caveat that matters**

The dashboard states it, and it changes how you read the cost columns:

> *Paths are based on the timing of **first impressions**, while costs and impressions reflect **all exposures** before purchase.*

So the sequence is ordered by when each campaign group first reached the customer, but the money attached to the row covers every impression along the way. A path can look expensive because of exposures that arrived late and contributed little to the ordering.

Treat the sequence as reliable and the per-path cost as indicative.

## **What to do with it**

**Filter to one format and compare.** Set **Paths Include** to a single format, then look at paths with and without it. If the format never improves the NTB rate of the paths it joins, it is riding along.

**Rank by NTB sales instead of sales.** One dropdown change reorders the whole board around acquisition rather than revenue, and it usually promotes completely different paths.

**Take the finding to budget.** If DSP-first paths are 14% NTB and SP-first are 92%, the question is not whether to cut DSP — it is whether the prospecting half of DSP is funded at all. See [**Decide whether your upper-funnel DSP is worth keeping**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/is-your-dsp-worth-keeping).

**Check it against the other two dashboards.** Low DSP NTB here should show up as low DSP NTB on **NTB Purchases** and **NTB Customers**. If all three agree, it is real.

## **What not to conclude**

**A path is not causation.** It records exposure order, not influence. Somebody who scrolled past a display ad appears in the path.

**Paths do not include organic.** Only ad exposures are visible. A customer who found you through search and was later shown a display ad looks DSP-influenced here.

**Top five is not all of it.** Fifty-plus paths exist; the long tail is real, and the table below the chart holds it, with occurrences, impressions and total cost.

**Monthly cohorts.** One calendar month at a time, like every AMC dashboard.

## **Related**

- [**Time to Conversion: Checking Your Attribution Window**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/time-to-conversion) — how long the journey takes.
- [**NTB Purchases: New Business by Campaign**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/ntb-purchases) — the same acquisition question by format.
- [**DSP Campaigns**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/dsp-campaigns) — checking which audiences your display spend bought.
- [**Why SP, SB and SD Numbers Don't Add Up**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/why-sp-sb-and-sd-numbers-dont-add-up) — why single-campaign credit misleads.