What is view-through conversion?

A sale credited to an ad that someone saw but didn’t click.

A view-through conversion is a sale, ticket or sign-up credited to an ad the person saw but never clicked. If someone scrolled past your video on Tuesday and bought on Friday, the platform can count that as a view-through.

Views are cheap and plentiful, so view-throughs add up fast. Some ads do work without a click, especially video and brand work, which is why view-throughs exist. But a platform that shows your ad to a lot of people will find many of them buying later for reasons that have nothing to do with the ad. The longer the window and the bigger the audience, the more credit flows in.

Why it matters

View-throughs can inflate results fast, because a lot of people see an ad and buy for other reasons.

An example

Example (made-up numbers): a report shows 1,000 conversions. 300 came from clicks and 700 from views within seven days. Ask to see the 300 on their own, then check how many of the 700 also appear in another channel’s report.

Where it misleads

Reading a view-through total as if every one were a click. Many reports blend the two into one conversions number without saying so.

How Arcus handles it

We split click and view credit in every spend report, match both against your own numbers, and flag view-throughs that another channel also counted.

More in our guide: Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram): how to tell what worked