First-Touch vs Last-Touch Attribution
First-touch and last-touch are the two attribution models that decide which click gets credit when several affiliates send the same visitor. First-touch credits the earliest eligible click; last-touch credits the most recent click before the conversion.
When a single visitor is sent to the same offer by more than one affiliate before they convert, someone has to decide who gets paid. That decision is the attribution model, and the two dominant choices are first-touch and last-touch.
- Last-touch credits the visitor's most recent click before the conversion. This is the industry default and it rewards the partner who closed the sale.
- First-touch credits the visitor's earliest eligible click inside the attribution window. It rewards the partner who introduced the customer, and it protects that partner from being poached by a retargeter at the last moment.
A worked example
A visitor discovers your product through Affiliate A's blog review on Monday, then clicks Affiliate B's coupon link on Friday just before buying.
- Under last-touch, Affiliate B is credited and paid — they had the final click.
- Under first-touch, Affiliate A is credited and paid — they brought the customer in — even though the conversion pixel fired with Affiliate B's click ID. The platform uses the later click only to recognize the visitor, then walks back to their first eligible click.
The choice changes real money, so it is a deliberate program decision, not a technical afterthought. Coupon and retargeting partners thrive under last-touch; content and discovery partners are treated fairly under first-touch.
The rules under first-touch
First-touch only considers clicks for the same offer, skips clicks older than the attribution window (so if the very first click expired, the earliest one still inside the window wins), never credits blocked clicks, and — because economics are frozen at click time — pays the first affiliate's terms.
How this works in LimeliJourney
In LimeliJourney the model is the offer's Payment model, set on the offer card's Attribution tab: Last touch (the default) or First touch. Whichever you pick, attribution resolves the winning click and copies its affiliate, campaign, channel, and creative onto the conversion. You can always verify which click won: open any conversion from the Conversions Report and check the Journey tab — the credited click carries a Credited badge, and every other click on that offer is shown in order, so a disputed payout is settled by looking, not arguing.