First-Click Attribution
By the AdFlint research team · Last reviewed July 2026
Assigns the full conversion credit to the first recorded ad interaction in a user's path, treating discovery as the decisive moment.
The earliest touch in the conversion path takes 100 percent of the credit, which highlights channels that create demand rather than harvest it. Teams reach for it when arguing that prospecting is undervalued by default reporting. Google Ads and GA4 retired it as a selectable model in 2023, so it now lives mainly in independent analytics. Its flaw is symmetrical to last click: it ignores everything that closed the sale.
First-Click Attribution compared with
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