You’re right mark. The model of compensating on multi-touch is complicated. This has always been one of the major things holding back a true MTA model, especially when the really large adtech companies like Google and Facebook are unlikely to participate in any advertiser’s model.
What gets me most excited about the future of multi-touch is the end of de-duplication discrepancies. All impressions, clicks, visits, installs, etc. are considered in a multi-touch model, and whoever is reading the data can determine how much each touchpoint is worth based on timing. So in the end, the publisher will always get credit for everything they provide. It will only be a question of how valuable their contribution was.

If the advertiser sets a $10 total bounty, whether it’s paid 100% to the last-click publisher, or spread out using some formula over 10 publishers that touched the buyer, it’s still $10 out the door. Only by changing the **total** bounty can you reduce costs.

Of course, if you set $10 and are actually paying $13 because of competing, overlapping claims, then getting the collective set of referrers to agree to $10 will save money. But either way, it’s all about convincing your referrers to accept your algorithm. As the article *title* states, “top app marketers” likely have the leverage to do this. Little guys, not so much.

The solution — or at least the attempt at a solution: Try to get your publishers to agree to a formula, based on transparent, authoritative data from your analytics program. For each referrer, show them how many bounties they got at 1st touch, 2nd touch, etc., along with corresponding bounty $ amounts at each touchpoint. Simple math, but looks legit and may get them to say OK.