What content attracts the most valuable new clicks or leads to your brand?
You know, the ones who become buyers, and especially repeat buyers.
This is exactly what the First Click Attribution Model can tell you. An accurate First Click Attribution Report makes it easy to accurately depict the data about high performing or non-performing campaigns at the top of your marketing funnel.
Once you can easily compare ROI across channels and campaigns, it's easy to get the highest ROI from your paid ad budget by killing the poor performing campaigns and scaling the high performing ones.
First Click Attribution credits the revenue from a sale to the very first time a customer interacts with your brand. It essentially identifies what content interests a customer enough to visit your website or opt-in as a lead.
Looking at the image below showing a timeline of touchpoints, all of the circles on the timeline represent each touch point where a customer interacted with the brand's content. You can see the first click is when a user first takes an action showing interest in your products.
Knowing this makes it easy to identify and scale effective cold traffic ads. Eliminating low revenue campaigns also greatly improves ROI by reducing wasted as spend.
First click attribution is best used when determining what top of funnel content is not only bringing in purchasers, but high value customers. The higher the ROI on a campaign, the more bang you are getting for your advertising bucks. Optimizing ROI from cold traffic campaigns is absolutely critical for scaling your brand.
This is especially helpful for ecommerce brands that advertise across multiple channels such as Facebook, Google, and Snapchat. Once you have an accurate, unbiased picture of each channel's performance all in one place, it's easy to compare across channels and even campaigns from different channels.
Don't be fooled into relying on ad channels to report their own performance. While platforms like Google and Meta now push Data-Driven Attribution (DDA) as their default model, they still cannot provide a truly cross-channel, unbiased view of your entire funnel. They only use the data they collect, meaning an independent, first-party solution like Wicked Reports is still critical to compare performance across channels accurately, especially when focusing on LTV.
If you're going to scale revenue, you need reliable, accurate, unbiased marketing attribution data. No guesswork, no drama, and no garbage data. Marketing decisions made easy!
Following is an example of a First Click ROI Attribution Report from an actual ecommerce client's Wicked Reports dashboard.
This report can be created with a variety of parameters, including flexible time frames, sources (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, Email, Organic) , and even down to specific campaigns.
To create the report, simply choose the parameters you wish to review and click, "Apply."
In this example, our ecommerce client is looking at their First Click ROI Attribution Report.
The above view shows campaigns from different channels for an overall view of performance. The client can then drill down into each to look at individual campaign performance.
You can see that the ROI is calculated for each individual campaign. Positive ROI is shown in green and negative ROI is shown in red, making it easier to identify candidates for scaling or killing.
There are a number of additional columns available in this report at both the channel and campaign level, including:
Wicked Reports was created to provide accurate marketing attribution data and confidence in marketing decisions based on that data.
Marketers often make the mistake of optimizing cold traffic for clicks or leads. This could not be farther from the best practice to increase ROI!
The trick to optimizing cold traffic is to identify your highest lifetime value (LTV) customers. Take a look at your customers who have brought in the most revenue. Most likely these are customers who love your brand and buy over and over again. You want to find more customers just like them, because they bring in the most ROI from paid advertising.
The best way to do this is to be able to track those high value users, and see what content they interacted with. You can then replicate that customer journey with similar content and channels.
Our Wicked Customer LTV report lets you view every action a user has taken from first to last click in your funnel.
It is impossible to overstate how powerful First Click Attribution is for paid advertisers. Take the following steps to improve ROI on cold traffic:
It's that easy!
Want access to powerful, multi-channel, last-click attribution ROI reporting? Book a free demo with a Wicked Attribution Expert today!
FAQ
Why is First Click Attribution still important in 2025, with the rise of multi-touch models?
First Click Attribution remains critical for top-of-funnel optimization and brand awareness. It uniquely reveals the campaign or ad that first introduced the highest LTV (Lifetime Value) customers to your brand, which is essential for scaling cold traffic acquisition.
How does First Click Attribution help in optimizing for Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)?
The model identifies the initial touchpoints that generated customers who later became high-value, repeat buyers (High LTV). By scaling those specific 'first clicks,' marketers can intentionally acquire more profitable customers, shifting focus from cheap clicks to quality leads.
Should I use First Click Attribution or Data-Driven/Multi-Touch Attribution?
You should use both. First Click is best for understanding the start of the customer journey and optimizing cold traffic. Multi-Touch or Data-Driven models (like those in Wicked Reports) are best for understanding the full customer journey and distributing credit across all touchpoints accurately.