What is multi-channel attribution and which model should you use?
First touch, last touch, linear, and why the model matters less than the data behind it
Multi-channel attribution is how you decide which marketing touch gets credit when a buyer saw five of them before converting. Pick a model, then stop arguing about it: the quality of the data feeding the model changes your answer far more than the model does.
The models in plain terms
- First touch gives all credit to the channel that introduced you. Good for judging awareness spend. Ignores everything that closed the deal.
- Last touch gives all credit to the final click. Simple, and it systematically overpays branded search and retargeting, because those are just the last step of work someone else did.
- Linear splits credit evenly across every touch. Fair, and it treats a display impression as equal to a demo request, which it is not.
- Data-driven lets the platform distribute credit based on observed converting and non-converting paths. Google Ads uses this by default, and GA4 offers it alongside paid and organic last click and Google paid channels last click. Google retired first click, linear, time decay and position based models in GA4 in November 2023.
What we actually recommend
Keep first touch and last touch side by side on every lead record, and use data-driven inside the ad platforms for bidding. First touch tells you what to fund at the top. Last touch tells you what closes. Looking at both stops the two arguments that waste the most time: killing awareness spend because it never gets last click credit, and over funding branded search because it always does.
Why the data matters more than the model
No model can credit a touch it never saw. If phone leads are untracked, if your CRM overwrites the original source, if half your links are untagged, or if consent blocks a third of visits, then every model gives you a confident wrong answer. Fix collection first. That means source captured at record creation, consistent tagging, and offline conversions fed back in.
Once the data is clean, we report it in one place, whether that is a HubSpot dashboard, GA4, or something heavier. See our analytics services.
Related: What kinds of dashboards can you build?, What is Domo and does LevelUp Digital work with it?, 5 Use Cases For Using GA4