Paid Advertising
View-Through Conversion
A conversion credited to an ad someone saw but never clicked — useful for measuring display, but easy to over-trust.
Definition
A view-through conversion is recorded when someone is shown an ad, doesn't click it, and later converts on their own. It credits the impression with influencing the conversion even though there was no click.
In depth
Most conversions are click-based: someone clicks, then acts. This kind fires when a person saw your display or video ad, scrolled past, and then converted later through some other path. It's meant to capture the assist an impression provided, and it lives at the soft end of marketing attribution.
For a contractor running display, retargeting, or YouTube to build name recognition in a market, this metric gives a sense of whether all those impressions move anyone. That visibility matters — but the credit is softer than a click, because you can't prove the ad caused the action versus the person converting anyway.
The trap is stacking these next to click conversions and treating them as equal, which inflates your apparent return on ad spend and can push budget toward weak placements. We report them separately, keep the attribution window tight, and weight booked-job revenue over impression credit so your ROAS stays honest.
Worked example
A remodeler's YouTube ad logs 50 view-through conversions in a month; counted alongside clicks it looks great, but reviewed on its own only a handful tie to booked estimates.
Paid Advertising
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