Meta Ads Attribution Settings: Click and View Windows

This guide uses the Meta Business Help Center: About attribution models and attribution settings, About actions attributed to your ad, Set up engage-through in Meta Ads Manager, Compare attribution settings in Meta Ads Reporting, About incremental attribution, How to use incremental attribution, How to view results for incremental attribution, About custom attribution, Set up custom attribution, Differences between event counts in Ads Manager, Ads Reporting and Events Manager and About conversion count differences between Meta Ads Reporting and third-party reporting tools. Checked on 8 November 2026. Meta is rolling some of these features out and changes the pages often, so check them before you rely on a detail.

What Meta attributes, and what it doesn't need to

Meta splits the actions people take after seeing an ad into three groups:

• Actions on the ad, such as an impression, a link click, a video view, a reaction or a share. These happen on the ad itself, so no attribution is needed. They appear in their own columns in Ads Manager.
• Actions off the ad, such as a purchase or an enquiry on your website. Meta says these "are attributed back to your ad if they happened within a certain number of days after someone viewed or clicked on your ad." By default, Ads Manager shows them using the attribution setting of the ad set.
• Actions that can happen in both places. Meta's example is an event ad: people can choose Going or Interested on the ad, or click through to the event page and choose it there.

Off-ad actions only reach Meta if your website or app reports them, through the Meta Pixel, the Conversions API or an SDK. Our Meta Pixel and Conversions API guide covers that part. This guide is about how Meta decides which of those events count for your ads.

Attribution models: standard, incremental, custom

You choose attribution at the ad set level, in two layers. First the attribution model, which Meta says informs ad delivery and determines how conversions can be credited to your ads. Then, for the standard model only, the attribution setting: which kinds of interaction count, and for how many days.

Model	What Meta says it does	Availability
Standard	"optimizes delivery for selected time windows and user behaviors", crediting conversions based on impressions, clicks and/or video plays	The usual choice; the only model with click, view and engage-through settings
Incremental	Optimizes for conversions that machine learning models predict were caused by the ad	Sales, Engagement or Leads objectives, Website or Website and app conversion location
Custom	Uses attribution credit you send from your own analytics tool	Meta says it "may not be available to you yet"; Sales campaigns optimising for purchases

Meta warns that results "cannot be compared in the Campaign Overview table across ad sets with different attribution models", because each model counts differently. Use the comparison feature described below, or your own analytics tool, instead.

Click, view and engage-through windows

For website and in-store conversions, Meta currently lists these standard settings:

Setting	Counts a conversion that happened...	Windows
Click-through	after a link click on your ad	1 day or 7 days
View-through	after an impression of your ad	1 day (or None)
Engage-through	after a click on the ad that is not a link click, or a video play of 5 seconds (97% of the video if it is shorter than 5 seconds)	1 day

Meta adds that "Some accounts may still use prior versions of click-through and engage-through attribution while this feature is rolling out", so the options in your account may look a little different. The setting sits in the ad set, under the Conversion section: click Show more options, then edit the standard attribution selections.

Some iOS 14 and later app campaigns don't get every option. App re-engagement campaigns using Meta's attribution (Aggregated Event Measurement) report on 1-day attribution; app install campaigns using Meta's attribution report on 1-day or 7-day click; campaigns using Apple's SKAdNetwork report "From Apple's SKAdNetwork". Our app attribution guide explains SKAdNetwork itself.

Engage-through in detail

Engage-through is meant for people who interact with an ad without clicking the link. Meta's example is a video ad for an online yoga class in Instagram Stories: the viewer saves the ad or watches it for more than 5 seconds, moves on, and signs up the next day. That sign-up counts as a 1-day engagement conversion.

Meta says engage-through, used alongside click-through and view-through, "can help you drive more incremental conversions from people who engage with your ads but are less likely to click and convert immediately." Some limits from the same page:

• It is available for all placements except Facebook in-stream video ads that can't be skipped.
• 1-day engagement won't show in reporting for campaigns that don't use video.
• The setup Meta describes uses the Engagement, Leads or Sales objective with Website or App as the conversion location.
• For Android app promotion campaigns, engage-through is only available for reporting.

How the Results column adds up

The Results column shows the actions tied to your objective, counted with your attribution setting. Other actions the ad led to, such as a Page like after a purchase, still appear in their own columns but not in Results.

With engage-through switched on, what lands in Results depends on the combination. With click-through, view-through and engage-through, Results includes click-through and view-through conversions. With click-through and engage-through only, Results includes click-through and engagement conversions. Meta's example: with 1-day click, 1-day view and 1-day engaged-view selected, 5 click-through, 15 view-through and 3 engagement conversions show as 20 in Results.

So a campaign that includes 1-day view will usually report more conversions than the same campaign measured on clicks alone. That isn't more sales; it is a wider rule for which sales get credited. Keep the setting the same across ad sets you want to compare.

Comparing attribution settings

You can see how the numbers change under different windows without changing your campaign. In Meta Ads Reporting you can compare 1-day view, 1-day click, 7-day click and 28-day click, "regardless of the ones you chose to optimize for in your campaign." Note that 28-day click is a reporting view here, not one of the optimisation windows listed above.

1. Open Meta Ads Reporting and click Customize at the top right of the table.
2. In the Customize pivot table section, click Options next to the search bar and choose Select attribution settings.
3. Tick the settings to compare.
4. Pick the conversion count: All conversions for every measurable conversion after a click or view, or First conversion for only the first one.
5. Click Apply.

You need administrator, advertiser or analyst access to the ad account. If a campaign has run for less than 28 days, the 28-day click view only covers the days it has run. Engage-through results have their own option (1-day Engagement) in the same comparison. iOS 14 and later app campaigns support fewer windows; Meta's page lists them per objective.

In Ads Manager, the Columns menu has a Compare attribution models option, which adds incremental results next to your standard ones.

Incremental attribution

Standard attribution counts every conversion inside the window. Incremental attribution "uses machine learning models that predict whether a conversion is caused by an ad", and optimises for those. To use it:

1. In Ads Manager, click Create and choose the Sales, Engagement or Leads objective.
2. In the ad set, choose Website or Website and app as the conversion location.
3. Under Conversion goals, choose Maximize number of conversions or Maximize value of conversions, then click Show more options.
4. Under Attribution model, choose Incremental.

Two rules matter: "You cannot use bid controls when using incremental attribution", and "You cannot change your attribution model after you publish your campaign." To switch, you make a new campaign.

You can also view incremental results for a campaign that uses standard attribution, through Compare attribution models. These results aren't available for date ranges before 1 April 2025. Meta's example: a campaign with 100 conversions, 70 of which Meta considers incremental, shows 70 under incremental and 100 under standard, and cost per result changes to match. Meta recommends comparing within one model rather than across models.

Custom attribution

Custom attribution lets you send Meta the credit your own attribution system gives each Meta touchpoint, so delivery optimises toward your numbers instead of Meta's. Meta says it is best suited if you make budget decisions with your own attribution system or a supported partner (it names Adobe, Northbeam, Rockerbox and Triple Whale), run Sales campaigns optimising for purchases, and have a Conversions API connection.

• The data arrives as a Conversions API event called AppendAttribution, which adds attribution data to an earlier Purchase event.
• Meta needs about 1 to 2 weeks of high-quality signals before you can create campaigns with it, and emails the creator of the attribution source when it is ready.
• It works on new campaigns only. "It cannot be added to existing campaigns."
• The campaign uses a campaign budget with the Highest volume or Highest value bid strategy.

Meta says it may not suit advertisers focused on brand awareness, or who see no significant gap between Meta's attribution and their own measurement.

Why Meta's numbers differ from Events Manager and GA4

Three places can show three different counts for the same event:

• Events Manager shows attributed and unattributed events, including organic traffic and visits from other platforms, and its Total events count is not deduplicated.
• Ads Manager and Ads Reporting show only events attributed to a person who was shown your ad, after deduplication and after discarding events for data policy or regulatory reasons. So they are usually lower than Events Manager.
• Your own analytics, such as GA4, uses its own rules. Meta lists reasons for gaps: it measures across devices by person rather than by cookie, it can credit conversions to an ad that was only seen, ad blockers can stop the Pixel firing, some tools rely on referrer URLs, and metric definitions differ.

The view-through point is the big one. Meta notes that "Some third-party reporting platforms may struggle to attribute conversions to impressions." A purchase after someone only saw an Instagram ad can count under 1-day view in Meta, while your analytics tool credits whatever visit it saw. GA4's own models and lookback windows are explained in our GA4 attribution guide. Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions.

Choosing a setting

The Help pages above don't recommend one window for every advertiser. The points below are our suggestion, not Meta's:

• Match the window to how people buy. If customers usually think it over for days, 7-day click gives the system more of those conversions to learn from. For quick, low-cost actions, a shorter window is closer to what the ad did.
• Decide on view-through deliberately. It adds conversions that are harder to tie to the ad. Use the 1-day click column in the comparison to see how much of your result comes from views.
• Keep one setting across ad sets you compare, and write down when you change it, so month-to-month reports stay like for like.
• Check against your own records. Enquiries in your inbox or orders in your shop are the final test. Our custom conversions guide shows how to measure a specific thank-you page.

For objectives, ad sets and the rest of Ads Manager, start with our Facebook and Instagram ads guide.

FAQ

What attribution windows does Meta offer?

For the standard model, website and in-store conversions: 1-day or 7-day click-through, 1-day view-through and 1-day engage-through. In Ads Reporting you can also compare 28-day click as a reporting view.

What is engage-through attribution?

It counts conversions within 1 day after someone interacts with your ad without clicking the link, or plays a video ad for at least 5 seconds (97% of a video shorter than 5 seconds).

Can I change the attribution model after publishing?

Not for incremental attribution: Meta says you cannot change the attribution model after you publish, so make a new campaign. Custom attribution also works on new campaigns only.

Why does Ads Manager show fewer conversions than Events Manager?

Events Manager includes events from people who never saw your ad, and its Total events count is not deduplicated. Ads Manager only shows attributed, deduplicated events.

Why does Meta report more conversions than GA4?

Meta can credit a conversion to an ad that was only seen (view-through) and measures by person across devices. GA4 credits sessions and channels under its own model, so the same sale can land under a different channel there.

Attribution is only as good as the events your site sends. We set up tracking as part of our website development work. See all our services, or browse more guides.