First-Touch Attribution

A practical example

Example: under first-touch, a podcast sponsorship that first introduced a lead to your brand would receive full credit for a deal closed months later by sales outreach, while the closing webinar receives none.

What to evaluate before investing

• Verify the platform defines "first touch" consistently: first-ever touch, first touch in a window, or first touch per opportunity.
• Check whether untrackable first touches (direct traffic, offline events) are recorded or silently dropped.
• Confirm reports can show first-touch alongside other models for side-by-side comparison.

Limitations and tradeoffs

First-touch overstates channels that generate cheap early clicks and understates channels that convert, so it should inform demand-generation budget, not total channel performance.