What is Last Click Attribution in Mobile Marketing?

Last-click attribution is a marketing model that gives the attribution credit to the last click inside of the attribution window. Last-click attribution is a standard in mobile marketing analytics. All of the existing tools, such as MMPs and ad networks, use last-click attribution by default. Tenjin is not an exception.

What is an example of Last-click Attribution?

Let’s consider the following example. Jack sees an ad for a new mobile game on TikTok and clicks on it. He doesn’t end up installing the app though because he does not want to use his limited mobile gigabytes on downloading a new app at this moment. By the time he gets home, he forgets about the app that he wanted to download. Thankfully (for the advertiser), Jack sees another ad for the same app at home. This time, however, the ad was placed by Google. Jack decides to click on the ad again and this time he downloads the app.

In this scenario, both TikTok and Google are getting clicks, but only Google is going to get the install credit for Jack’s download as Google’s ad got the last click. This might be unfair to TikTok, but those are the rules of the game when you use last-click attribution.

Tenjin’s DataVault: Get insight beyond Last-click Attribution

Last-click attribution gives you a picture of what the most effective channels are when you attribute users based on the last click. However, what if you want to see all of the clicks that a user made throughout their journey? Or maybe you’d like to change your view to first-click attribution. This type of insight is usually not possible to get for small teams, and is more commonly available to enterprise-level publishers that have the engineering resources to set this up.

Tenjin’s DataVault enables small teams to get access to this data and insight directly. Although last-click attribution is available on the Tenjin dashboard by default, advertisers can get data on a user's click journey on the DataVault, which can help them make different inferences about different channels and campaigns.

What is the difference between Last-touch and Last-click Attribution?

Last-click attribution is a variation of last-touch attribution. The difference is simple: with last-touch attribution, the metric that converts a user is not specific to a click. For example, it can also be an impression.
## How do impressions and clicks stack up against each other?
Let’s go back to the Last-click attribution example we had above. This time, however, let’s assume Jack does not click on the Google ad when he gets home. Instead, he just sees the ad and goes directly to the App Store and downloads the app. This time even though Google recorded the last-touch point via impression, the install is going to be attributed to Tiktok. This is because clicks always trump impressions. Even if the impression happens after the click. We also follow this logic in Tenjin.

What happens when there was no click?

In the absence of a click, Tenjin follows the following model:

• If there was no interaction with an ad inside of the attribution window before an install was made, the user is attributed to an organic install.

• If an impression was recorded within the view-through attribution window, the user is attributed to the ad network campaign that generated the impression.

What are other attribution models?

It is worth mentioning that in web marketing, you might stumble upon other attribution models such as:

• First touch
• Last Non-Direct Click
• Linear
• Time-Decay
• Position-Based