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Definition
First-touch attribution credits the first marketing interaction a person had with a business; last-touch attribution credits the final interaction before they took action, such as calling.
The two rules, side by side
Suppose a prospect sees a Facebook ad in September, searches your agency name in October and then calls the number on your website. First-touch credits the Facebook ad, because it introduced you. Last-touch credits the website, because it was the final step. Neither is wrong. They answer different questions: first-touch asks what starts relationships, last-touch asks what closes them.
Other models split credit across every contact. They need a record of each person’s whole journey, which most small agencies do not have.
What phone-based tracking gives you
A tracking number sees only the moment of the call. It knows which number was dialed, so it behaves like last-touch: the credit goes to the source that displayed the number the caller used. It cannot see the ad someone saw a month earlier. VereTel’s numbers work this way, per tracking number and, with number insertion, per page.
Reading the numbers honestly
Last-touch tends to favor sources that people use late, such as branded search and your own website, and to undervalue the ads that created interest. Keep that in mind before cutting a source that rarely gets the last call. A fuller discussion is in attributing calls to ad clicks.