View-Through Attribution: The 1-Day View Window That Inflates Your Meta ROAS

A 1-day view window credits Meta for any purchase within 24 hours of someone seeing the ad, even without a click. That is the least accurate window Meta offers, and it is on by default. Compare the 7-day click number with and without the view window, and the gap is the size of the inflation.

The conversion that never clicked

Meta reports 150 conversions. GA4 says 110. HubSpot says 90. All three are technically correct, and the gap is mostly the windows. Meta's default attribution setting is 7-day click and 1-day view: Meta takes credit for a conversion if the user clicked the ad within the past 7 days, or viewed it within the past 24 hours, even if they never clicked. The view half is the one nobody audits, because the report does not label it. It just adds the number.

Click-through attribution is the most accurate window Meta offers, because a click is an action the shopper took. View-through is an impression, and an impression on a feed the shopper scrolled past in half a second counts the same as an impression they studied. Meta's own developer history shows the direction of travel: the 7-day and 28-day view windows stopped being returned by the Ads Insights API from January 12, 2026, and the 28-day click window stays only for comparison in reporting. The platform is narrowing what it will stand behind, and the view window is the first thing it narrowed.

How big the gap is, and what to do about it

The honest way to size it is a comparison, not an argument. Pull the same campaign with 7-day click and 1-day view, then with 7-day click alone, and put the two numbers side by side. The difference is the view-through credit, and on prospecting campaigns it is often a quarter to a third of the reported conversions. Then pull the same order total from the store itself, because one order can be credited by Meta, Google, and LinkedIn simultaneously, each inside its own window, and the store's own total is the only number that cannot be double counted.

None of this makes Meta useless. It makes the default setting a choice that should be made deliberately, not inherited. For most direct-to-consumer stores, the working rule is simple: optimize and report on 7-day click, keep the view window visible as a comparison so the gap stays honest, and validate the real impact with Marketing Efficiency Ratio, total revenue against total spend, which no window can inflate. The window changes the report. The ratio changes the decision. The same measurement argument runs through why last click is dead and Meta's 7-day click against GA4's data-driven model.

Frequently asked questions

What is Meta's default attribution setting?

7-day click and 1-day view. Meta takes credit for a conversion if the user clicked within 7 days or viewed the ad within the past 24 hours, even without a click.

Is view-through attribution accurate?

It is the least accurate window Meta offers. A click is an action the shopper took; a view is an impression they may have scrolled past. Click-through is the most accurate, view-through the most inflated.

Can I still use a 28-day window on Meta?

Only for clicks, and only in reporting. The 28-day click window is available in Ads Manager's compare attribution settings, not in the ad set. The 7-day and 28-day view windows stopped being returned by the Ads Insights API from January 12, 2026.

Why do Meta, GA4, and Shopify never agree?

They measure different things inside different windows. Meta counts 7 days after a click and 1 day after a view, Google Ads defaults to 30 days, and GA4 uses a 90-day lookback for key events. One order can be credited by all three at once.