Advertising
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View-Through Conversion
A conversion credited after an ad impression with no click, inside a set window. Display and video campaigns lean on this claim more than search does.
Detailed explanation
Someone sees a banner, then converts days later via direct or organic. The platform may still credit the view. Window length (1 day vs 7) changes the number dramatically.
Last-click reports ignore this. Adding click and view-through totals double-counts. Without an incrementality test, VTC is a hypothesis, not proof.
Useful as a directional upper-funnel signal, not as cash evidence. MER, finance, and experiments are sturdier for budget calls.
Frequently asked questions
- Is a VTC a real sale?
- It is a platform attribution claim. The same sale may also sit on another channel’s last click.
- How should the window be set?
- To the buying cycle. Impulse goods may use 1 day; long B2B cycles use longer windows and inflate more easily.
Related terms
Internal links for the topic cluster — read these concepts together.
- ConversionThe defined action you wanted completed: a purchase, signup, download, or form. Traffic without that count means the campaign flew blind on its results.
- Attribution ModelAn Attribution Model is a measurement framework that determines how much credit for a conversion should be assigned to each channel or ad a user interacted with during their purchase journey.
- ImpressionAn impression is a single instance of an online ad being displayed to a user.
- Display AdvertisingBanners, native units, and other visual formats on sites and apps. Unlike search text ads, they show up before someone has typed a query into the box.
- Conversion WindowA Conversion Window is the setting that defines the maximum time after a user interacts with an ad during which a resulting conversion can still be attributed to that ad.
- Demand GenGoogle’s visual demand campaigns across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. They create demand; they do not harvest a typed search the way Search does.