First-touch attribution is a marketing attribution model that identifies the first touchpoint in a customer journey that leads to a conversion. By assigning all credit for a defined conversion event to the first user interaction, it helps marketers identify which interactions can drive the first action or brand awareness.

It is widely used by digital marketers across multiple digital channels, such as paid ads, social media, search, and email.

When Is First-Touch Attribution Used?

The first-touch attribution model is especially useful in top-of-funnel (TOFU) analysis to identify which interactions drive brand awareness, so marketers can refine their strategies to focus on the most effective channels.

What Are the Benefits of First-Touch Attribution?

First-touch attribution is easy to implement and provides clear, straightforward data on which marketing channels engage their audience first. Using this model at the start of a new campaign can help guide where to adjust messaging and how to budget spending the most effectively.

What Are the Limitations of First-Touch Attribution?

If first-touch attribution is used on its own without other models, the marketing team will gain only limited insight into their campaigns. There are numerous other touchpoints in campaigns that provide data-rich insight about customer behavior throughout the journey.

While first-touch attribution is powerful for illuminating the most impactful, initial brand awareness, there are other important models to incorporate in a campaign to fully understand sentiment across the entire customer journey, including last-touch, multi-touch, and time-decay attributions, to name a few.