Last-Click Attribution

Last-click attribution is an attribution model that credits the final click before a conversion with the entire sale, meaning the last partner to refer a user receives all of the commission for that deposit, trade, or purchase. It is the default rule in most affiliate programs because it is simple to enforce: whichever affiliate link wrote the most recent tracking cookie or click ID at conversion time wins the payout. This makes last-click a practical baseline for marketing attribution even when a journey involved several touchpoints.

The model dominates affiliate payouts for two reasons. First, it is unambiguous, which reduces commission disputes between partners who all touched the same user. Second, it aligns with how conversions are technically recorded through a server-to-server postback that fires on the last credited click. Because the rule is binary, operators can reconcile payouts quickly and partners understand exactly what they are being paid for, which is why it remains the standard against which other models are compared.

Last-click has clear blind spots. It ignores the assists that warmed a user up, so an affiliate who introduced a player but did not deliver the final click earns nothing, which can under-reward top-of-funnel content. It also overlooks impressions captured by view-through attribution. Operators that want to credit earlier touches move toward multi-touch attribution, but even those models usually depend on a deterministic attribution identifier to know which clicks belonged to the same user.