Meta Killed the 7-Day View Window. Your Old Reports Are Now Fiction.

Meta removed 7-day and 28-day view attribution on January 12, 2026, leaving only 1-day view. Your reported conversions fell 20 to 40 percent without performance moving, because the measurement window shrank, not because the ads got worse.

What changed, and when

Meta announced the change in October 2025 and enforced it on January 12, 2026: the 7-day and 28-day view-through attribution windows were removed from the Ads Insights API, and with them every combined window that used them, including 7-day click plus 28-day view. What survives is 1-day view, the only view window remaining, and the click windows, 1-day click, 7-day click, and 28-day click for reporting, which are unchanged. The change is a visibility change, not a performance change: nothing was removed from campaigns, nothing was taken away from delivery, only how long Meta shows view-based credit has changed.

The timing is the trap. Advertisers who missed the October announcement discovered the change in January, when their reported conversions dropped and their campaigns looked like they had stopped working. Industry data showed some advertisers had 30 to 40 percent of conversions coming from the 8 to 28 day view window that no longer counts. Those conversions did not disappear from the business. They disappeared from the report, and the report is what the budget decision is based on.

Why your numbers fell without performance moving

View-through attribution credits conversions to ads people saw but did not click. Someone sees the ad on Tuesday, does not click, searches the brand on Friday, and buys. That conversion used to count within the 7-day view window. Now it does not, because the only view window is 1 day, and Friday is four days after Tuesday. For awareness campaigns, where people rarely click immediately, the effect is severe. For direct response, where people click and buy immediately, most conversions already happened within 1 to 7 days, so the impact is smaller. For B2B with long sales cycles, view-through attribution is now nearly useless, because the prospect who saw the ad, researched for two weeks, and then converted is no longer attributed at all.

The drop is not a performance problem, and treating it as one leads to the wrong fix. Cutting budget on a campaign that looks worse because the window shrank is cutting a campaign that is performing the same as before. The right response is to translate the old numbers into the new window before judging anything, and to judge the campaign on the metric that still measures it, not on the metric that lost its window.

The ratio that translates old to new

Pull data from before the change with both 1-day and 7-day view windows, and calculate the ratio: 1-day view conversions divided by 7-day view conversions. If you historically saw 100 conversions with 7-day view and 65 with 1-day view, the ratio is 0.65. When you see 80 conversions now with 1-day view only, the adjusted equivalent is about 123 conversions on the old window. That translation is the only honest way to compare January with December, and it should be written on every report that crosses the change, because a report without it is a report that lies by omission.

The ratio is specific to your account, your campaigns, and your buying cycle, so do not borrow someone else number. An awareness campaign with a long consideration window will have a lower ratio than a retargeting campaign where people convert the same day. Calculate it per campaign, not per account, and recalculate it quarterly, because the mix of campaigns changes and the ratio changes with it. The ratio is a translation, not a truth, and it should be labeled as one.

What to report instead

Report 1-day view and 7-day click separately, and stop reporting a blended total that mixes them, because the blended total is the number that fell and the fall is an artifact. Report the click windows, which are unchanged, as the primary performance metric, and report the view window as a secondary signal with the ratio attached. And export the historical data before it ages out: Meta limited historical access to 13 months for most breakdowns and 6 months for frequency data, so the pre-change data that lets you calculate the ratio will not be there forever. The change is permanent. The reporting has to change with it, and the teams that changed their reporting in January are the ones still making sensible budget decisions in November.

Frequently asked questions

What exactly did Meta remove on January 12, 2026?

The 7-day and 28-day view-through attribution windows from the Ads Insights API, and every combined window that used them. Only 1-day view remains. Click windows, 1-day, 7-day, and 28-day click, are unchanged.

Did my ads actually perform worse?

No. This is a visibility change, not a performance change. The ads delivered the same, but fewer conversions are attributed to them because the measurement window shrank from 28 days to 1 day for view-through.

How do I compare January performance with December?

Calculate the ratio of 1-day view to 7-day view conversions from pre-change data, and use it to translate current 1-day numbers into old-window equivalents. Calculate it per campaign, not per account.

Does this affect click attribution at all?

No. Click windows are unchanged, including 7-day click, which is the default. A shopper who clicks on Monday and buys the following Sunday still counts under 7-day click.