First Touch (aka first-touch attribution) is an attribution model that gives 100% of the conversion credit to the very first marketing touchpoint in a user’s journey. If a user first discovers you via a paid ad, then later returns through email and direct, the conversion is fully credited to the ad. It’s a simple, top-of-funnel lens: “Which channel opened the door?”
Why it’s used:
- Clean read on demand generation and discovery.
- Easy to implement and explain to stakeholders.
- Useful for budget decisions on awareness channels and campaign launches.
Where it misleads:
- Ignores all later touches (email nurtures, remarketing, brand searches).
- Overvalues channels that are good at first contact, undervalues assistive channels.
- Can skew results in long, multi-step journeys (think B2B, high AOV ecommerce).
How is First Touch calculated?
For each conversion path, assign credit 1 to the first channel and 0 to all others.
Formula (per conversion):credit(channel_i) = 1 if channel_i is the first touchpoint, else 0
Across many conversions, sum credits per channel to get first-touch conversions and divide by totals for rates or shares.
Mini example
| User | Journey (→ is later) | First-touch credit |
|---|---|---|
| A | Paid Social → Organic → Conversion | Paid Social |
| B | Organic → Direct → Conversion | Organic |
| C | Display → Email → Direct → Conversion | Display |
In this sample, Paid Social = 1, Organic = 1, Display = 1 first-touch conversions.
When to use it
- Launching a new product or market, measuring which channels create net-new demand.
- Comparing top-of-funnel efficiency across Multi-Channel Funnel paths.
- Sanity-check against more complex models like Multi-Touch Attribution.
Implementation tips
- Define a stable “first known touchpoint” using consistent identifiers and UTM parameters.
- Keep lookback logic clear (e.g., first touch within 90 days).
- Always juxtapose with Last Touch or a multi-touch model in your Attribution Report to avoid budget myopia.