GuideMeasurement and attribution
Attribution window
Definition
How long after a click or a view a purchase still counts as the ad’s. Inside the window the sale is attributed; one day past it, the same sale is invisible to the report.
How it works
The platform starts a clock at the click and credits any purchase made before it runs out; the length of the clock is a setting. Widen it from 7 days to 28 and three extra weeks of purchases fall inside, so reported conversions rise without a single extra sale. View windows run the same way from an impression: the person saw the ad, or scrolled past it, and bought later. Platforms ship different defaults and treat views differently, so two accounts’ conversion counts cannot be compared until every window setting matches. Set your own window against the real length of the buying decision; your analytics already hold the time from first visit to order.
What to watch for
A jump in reported conversions with no matching move in booked revenue is what a widened window looks like; the account’s change history has the date. If view-through conversions are switched on, pull the click-versus-view split and see what share of the number rests on someone having been shown an ad they never clicked. And before any comparison across accounts, read all the window settings side by side: a 7-day-click account and a 28-day-click-and-view account are counting different events under the same word.
The question you ask
“If we cut the window to seven days, how much of this reported revenue survives?”