Value creation happens at the edge of networks, but is not recognized, and is absorbed by platform companies that drive centralized networks. Despite the Internet being an open network powered by a common tongue that everyone can speak in - HTTP - it is still not possible to access your own data across various centralized networks such as Facebook or Google.

Attribution (marketing) - Wikipedia

Walled Gardens

HTTP networks on the Internet are able to block content creators (and their own users!) from accessing data about how their content is consumed by other users on the networks.

As each centralized network does this, it becomes impossible for businesses to get a single view of their network activity, as instead of a single network that one can track across, there are as many networks as there are platforms on the Internet, and more.

The Attribution Problem

The problem with attribution models is that in the best case, they are incomplete and therefore generally useless. Worst case, they're outright wrong and downright harmful.

This report covers the problem in perfect amount of detail:

Bazaarvoice + Digiday Report - The Attribution Problem

Because it is not possible to find out which user on Facebook (say) shared your content with a potential shopper (just that the shopper happened to click on the CTA), businesses are forced to give the attribution to the platform as a whole (Facebook itself, and not Joe Blow the Facebook user).

And as a result, marketing has no choice but to pour more and more money into buying clicks from Facebook (and others), which convert at less than 1% typically, paying for a service that delivers less than 1% efficiency is likely to be labeled insane in any other industry.

But in online advertising: TINA. There Is No Alternative, not until the walls of the walled gardens on the Internet are brought down, or some other magic technology comes along that solves this very basic problem of the Internet.