What is last-click attribution?

Last-click attribution gives 100% of the credit for a conversion to the last marketing touch before the sale. It is the most common model because it is the simplest: whatever the customer clicked right before buying gets the win.

The problem with last-click

The last touch before a purchase is usually a branded search or a retargeting ad, which is to say a channel catching a customer who was already going to buy. Last-click makes those channels look like heroes and makes the ads that first introduced the customer look worthless. Spend drifts toward harvesting existing demand and away from creating new demand, which caps growth.

When it is fine

For a business with short, single-session purchases and little repeat buying, last-click is a reasonable approximation. The more your customers research, return, and buy over multiple visits, the more it distorts the picture.

Trakt keeps last-click available but tracks it alongside the first source that originally won the customer, so you can see both stories rather than letting the last hop hide the first.