Last-touch attribution

Updated 2026-11-02

Definition

Last-touch attribution gives 100% of the credit for a sale to the final visit before the payment. Every earlier visit gets nothing.

The model answers one question: what was the buyer doing right before they paid? It's a common default in ad platforms and analytics tools because it's simple to compute.

Example

This example uses made-up numbers. A buyer reads three of your blog posts from organic search over a month. They click a retargeting ad on Monday, then pay $1,200 on Tuesday.

Last-touch reports $1,200 for paid social and $0 for organic search. Yet the blog did most of the persuasion. If you read this report alone, you might cut content and buy more retargeting.

Now take a second buyer who pays $1,200 after clicking a link in your email. Last-touch reports it all under email, and that may be fair if the email contained the offer that made them buy.

Strengths and limits

Last-touch is good at showing which channels capture existing demand. It tends to favor branded search, retargeting and email, since those reach people who already plan to buy. It tends to undervalue whatever created the interest in the first place.

How Headstream measures it

Headstream takes the latest touchpoint before the payment, inside your lookback window, and gives it the full amount. A refund uses the same split as the original sale, so a refunded sale takes credit back from the same visit.

Use the last_touch model in the API or choose it in the revenue report. Attribution relies on Stripe, and connecting Stripe is in beta. Headstream runs every model each hour, so you can switch between them without waiting. Compare the result with first-touch before you change a budget. The methodology page has the exact rules.