I recently published a video about click attribution. In it, I explained how I’ve long believed that click attribution requires a click on an outbound link to report a conversion. Otherwise it would be a view-through conversion.
But Meta’s documentation is ambiguous at best, so I created a test to prove it one way or the other. Here’s what I did…
My Test
I created an Engagement campaign with the following conversion location settings in the ad set:
- Conversion Location: On Your Ad
- Engagement Type: Post Engagement
- Performance Goal: Maximize Daily Unique Reach
I used an ad that didn’t provide an outbound link to click on, only a static image with instructions.
The image asked people to do the following:
- Click the image.
- Open a separate browser window and go to a specific URL.
- Click a button that was on that page.
When the button on my website was clicked, it fired a custom event called ‘experiment’ that was unique to this test (it doesn’t fire anywhere else).
The Results
If click attribution requires an outbound click, Meta would count these as view-through conversions. Instead, every reported conversion (33 of them in all) was from click attribution.
This proves that click attribution can result from any click prior to a conversion. That’s bad when it comes to reporting since it’s one more black hole that can’t be captured using UTMs and referral traffic.
Make sure to read my blog post about this test and what it says about click attribution.
