A new definition of click attribution
Meta has finally updated their definition of click attribution.
Let’s break down the timeline and what changes actually occurred.
old definition
About a year ago, I shared Meta’s ambiguity regarding click attribution. The old definition was this…
Click attribution: Someone clicked your ad and took an action.
At the time, it was easy to think that this was a click on an ad link. The problem is that Meta doesn’t say either way, whether it includes all clicks or just some clicks.
my test
I ran a test and it all clicks. I created a static image ad with instructions to click on my image and be taken individually to a specific page on my website which would trigger a unique event.
Meta only reports click conversions.
In other words, clicks on static images count.
new definition
While it’s great to finally have this figured out after all these years, the definition of Meta can still confuse people. Well, not anymore.
I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but it was sometime in the past few months. Meta’s definition of click attribution now looks like this…
Click rate: Statistics optimize the results of any click on the ad within 1 day after conversion or within 7 days. Clicks may include interactions such as likes, shares, and saves.
It’s clearer now. Meta makes it clear that it is Click anywhereand include specific examples (oddly not even clicks on the links, but this time at least that’s implied).
still annoying
This is good. But it’s still annoying. I hate that click attribution includes any clicks. This doesn’t make any sense.
If someone clicks somewhere on your ad but doesn’t visit your website, any reported conversion is no more valuable than a view. And you can’t distinguish these conversions from other click-through conversions that actually occurred as a result of clicking the link.
I will always complain about this. Either allow us to separate these conversions from link clicks, or move non-link clicks to views.
Side note
Whenever this issue is discussed, some confident and opinionated people like to jump out and say that this has always been obvious because “all clicks” is not the same as “outbound clicks” or “landing page views”; CTR or CPC (all) includes clicks other than link clicks. I’ve been talking about this issue for ten years ( here , here and here ). You’re missing the point.
When we talk about attribution, things are very different. There are three types of click attribution. There is one. It’s either “click” or “view.” Because of this… I’m wasting my time, and that’s okay. This will happen no matter what.
