← Glossary
What is an attribution window?
The attribution window is the period after an ad click or view during which a resulting conversion is still credited to that ad.
It's a reporting setting, not a fact about the world, and changing it changes your numbers without anything real changing. A seven-day window credits more conversions than a one-day window to identical campaigns.
View-through attribution is the contentious part — crediting an ad someone saw but didn't click. It captures real influence and also flatters campaigns, which is why platforms enable it by default.
The practical rule is to pick a window, know what it is, and compare like with like. Most disagreements about whether ads are working turn out to be disagreements about attribution settings.