Facebook’s Attribution System in Ads Manager

  • By default, Facebook uses a last-touch attribution model, which means we will attribute full credit for a conversion to the last Facebook ad the person clicked or interacted with. If the person did not click on an ad, full credit is attributed to the last Facebook ad viewed. If they clicked the ad, it will get attributed to the ad clicked. If they didn’t click, it’s attributed to the most recent Facebook ad they saw.
  • Click-through attribution may include engagement clicks, such as likes, comments or shares on your ad. This means if someone liked your ad, conversions would be attributed to the click-through attribution window you’ve selected.
  • If one person clicks on an ad multiple times in a short period of time, Facebook will treat these as duplicates, and only count it as a single click in our reporting.
  • Any events outside the maximum conversion window (28 days) are not counted.
  • Numbers will continue to update through the 28 days following the end of a campaign. If you’re pulling your ads attribution data into your own models or data storage, you may want to backfill it with the final numbers after the full 28 days have passed.
  • Conversions and actions are counted in your reports on the day the click or view happened. You can also choose to report conversions based on the date the conversion occurred using our Ads Insights API.

Read more here –

Which Ad Gets Credit?

Let’s consider another scenario…

  • 30 days ago: User clicks ad, doesn’t convert
  • 14 days ago: User clicks ad, doesn’t convert
  • 7 days ago: User views ad, doesn’t convert
  • 2 days ago: User clicks ad, doesn’t convert
  • Today: User views ad, converts

According to the rules mentioned above, there are three ad actions that could qualify as a conversion (14-day click, 2-day click, and 1-day view). So do all three ads get credit??

Nope. And while you may assume that the ad the user viewed today would get credit, you’d be wrong.

Here are the conversion attribution rules when a user is shown more than one ad and then converts:

  1. The ad that received the most recent click (assuming it falls within attribution window)
  2. If no clicks, the ad that received the most recent view (assuming it falls within attribution window)

So in the example above, the 2-day click would get credit because it was the most recent click. Had there never been a prior click within an attribution window, the 1-day view would have received credit

Read more here