last-touch attribution
Last-Touch Attribution
An attribution model that assigns 100% of the credit for a conversion to the final marketing touchpoint the customer interacted with before buying or signing up.
When you'd see it: The historical default in many ad platforms and basic analytics tools (Google Analytics used last-touch as its default for years). Used in short sales cycles where the last interaction is genuinely the one that tipped the decision. Contrasted with first-touch attribution and multi-touch attribution.
Why it matters: Last-touch is simple and directionally useful for very short sales cycles. For longer cycles with multiple touchpoints — a B2B SaaS deal that took 6 months and 12 touchpoints — last-touch systematically overvalues bottom-of-funnel channels (retargeting, branded search) and undervalues the awareness channels that built interest in the first place.
Common mistakes: Using last-touch attribution to allocate budget across a multi-touch customer journey. The model will consistently tell you to cut awareness spending (which 'didn't close anything') and invest more in retargeting — which converts people who were already likely to buy. This produces a survivorship-bias loop: gut the channels that create buyers, then optimize the channel that harvests them.
Study this in BizTech Primer →