Glossary
Last-click attribution
A model that gives the whole commission to the last affiliate link the buyer clicked before purchase, inside the cookie window. It is the most common model in affiliate programs, and it rewards whoever is closest to checkout.
Also called: last click, last-touch attribution, last cookie wins.
A reader finds a product through your review, leaves, and days later clicks a coupon site's link on the way to checkout. The coupon site gets the sale; your review did the selling and earns nothing. It cuts the other way too: customers you brought pay you again only when they come back through your link, so a repeat buyer who types the store's address is no longer yours.
That is why the last click is fought over. Coupon pages, cashback portals and browser extensions position themselves at checkout for that reason. After extensions that applied their own codes without asking, the Chrome Web Store began requiring a user action and a real benefit before an extension applies an affiliate link, enforced from June 2025. Content affiliates answer with rates negotiated on their own data, or with programs that split commission between touchpoints, where such deals exist.
Related terms: Attribution, Cookie window, Cookie stuffing, Click ID, Publisher.