Skip to content
TrueROASDocs
DocsAds Manager

Which attribution model should I use and how does each one give credit?

E-Commerce, Last Touch, First Touch and Custom decide which visit gets credit for a sale, and this explains how each one chooses.

What an attribution model does

Attribution is how TrueROAS decides which ad or source gets the credit for a sale. Most customers visit your store more than once before they buy: an Instagram ad one week, a Google search the next, an email the day they order. TrueROAS saves every one of those visits on the order as the customer journey. The attribution model is the rule that picks one visit out of that journey and gives it the sale and the full order value. The other visits in the journey become assists.

The rule only changes who gets the credit. It never changes how many orders you had or how much they were worth. Switching models moves sales between your channels and ads, and the total stays the same.

How to switch is explained in How do I change the attribution model and attribution window?. This article explains what each model does once it is picked.

How TrueROAS picks the winner

Every model works the same way. For each order, TrueROAS lists the different sources in the journey, gives each one a score, and the highest score wins. Each model has its own set of points, and that is the only difference between them. Points are given for:

  • Being the last visit before the order, or a visit in the last hour, 8 hours or 24 hours before it.
  • Being the first visit of the journey.
  • Being a tracked ad, meaning a Meta, TikTok or Google Ads click that arrived with its ad or campaign id. The UTM Manager shows which of your ads send it.

A few sources are held back no matter which model you use:

  • Direct visits, coupon codes, payment provider pages and links to your own store never win while any other source is in the journey. A direct-only journey still counts as Direct.
  • Weak sources keep only a fifth of their points. These are organic visits, a bare Facebook or Instagram referral without an ad id, Shop app visits, and any campaign you marked as branded. See How do I mark my Google branded search campaigns?.

E-Commerce

E-Commerce is the recommended model and the default for every store. It gives a large bonus to tracked ads, with Meta and TikTok ads getting more than Google Ads campaigns, and it also rewards both the first visit and the most recent visits. In practice:

  • A tracked ad click wins over an organic visit, an email or a direct visit in the same journey, even when the ad click was days earlier and the other visit was minutes before checkout.
  • When two tracked ads are in the journey, the newest one usually wins, unless the older one started the journey and the newer one is more than a day old.
  • When there is no tracked ad in the journey, the last visit wins, with the first visit as the runner-up.

The result is that your ads get credit for the demand they created, while organic, email and direct visits that only closed a sale an ad started do not take that credit away. It is the model that makes it clearest which ads are worth scaling. Rasmus is adding a fuller explanation of why the model is built this way.

Last Touch

Last Touch gives most of its points to the last visit before the order, with a small bonus for tracked ads. The last visit wins unless it is a weak source, a direct visit or a coupon. A customer who clicked a Meta ad on Monday and came back from a Google search on Friday gives Friday's Google search the sale.

Use it when you want to see which channels close sales. Expect it to shift credit from your ads to email, organic search and referrals.

First Touch

First Touch is the mirror image. Most points go to the first visit in the journey, so the source that brought the customer to your store the first time wins, unless it is a weak source, a direct visit or a coupon. The same Monday and Friday customer gives Monday's Meta ad the sale.

Use it when you want to see which channels bring new customers in. Expect it to shift credit towards prospecting ads and away from retargeting, email and search.

Custom

Custom is a slot for a model made for your store. No store has a model set up in it today. If you pick it, TrueROAS falls back to a plain rule that favours the last visit and gives tracked ads almost no bonus, so your numbers look like a weaker Last Touch. Keep E-Commerce unless the TrueROAS team has set up a custom model with you.

Where the model shows

Good to know

  • The model applies to the whole store. Everyone on the store sees the same credited channels.
  • Only the store owner or an admin can change it; everyone else sees a message saying so.
  • The model never changes your order count, revenue, spend or the numbers an ad platform reports about itself. Why those differ is covered in Why don't my TrueROAS numbers match Meta or Shopify?.
  • Leads are always credited to their last visit. The model does not apply to them.
  • Only visits inside your attribution window are part of the journey and can win. Visits older than the window are not saved on the order, so making the window longer later does not bring them back.
  • You cannot make your own model, change the points or split one order between several sources.