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> you should be able to track whether a customer originated from an ad click vs. SEO

That's easy to track, but answers the wrong question. It answers whether the person clicked on the ad or the organic link. What we actually want to know is whether this person would convert even without seeing an ad. The only way to answer whether a person would still convert without seeing an ad is to make sure that they don't see an ad.

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My major failure in this thread was not specifying from that start that I'm not so much talking about paid search ads (google ads), as much as I mean FB, YouTube, etc. That's the arena where you've really gotta question if you're competing with yourself.

On the flip side of that, most of HN seems to think purely in terms of paid search ads, when there are many other types of online advertising that exist, and that don't have this issue baked into them.

Such is the nature of internet dialogue, I guess lol.

That's a good point. It's a lot harder to cannibalize organic traffic with non-search ads.

Are you conflating a call to action on a channel you already control with advertising? Because in that case you might try f(A), f(A,B) and also f(B): could be a synergistic effect, or they could just click on anything.

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