What is the conversion window on Facebook ads?

The conversion window is a setting in Facebook ads that gives you more control over how Facebook’s algorithm optimizes your ad campaigns for conversions.

The official Facebook explanation makes it a bit more difficult to understand than it needs to be, but it’s pretty simple.

How does the conversion window affect Facebook's algorithm for optimizing campaigns?

The Facebook ad conversion window is just a setting in your campaigns that tells Facebook how far back they should look to attribute conversions to an ad. This will impact how Facebook optimizes your ad delivery to get you more conversions.

There are two types of actions you can customize the conversion window for, an ad view and an ad click. For each action, you can set their own conversion windows. Let’s take a look at two examples to help you pick the best Facebook ad conversion windows for your campaigns.

Example #1: Low-price ecommerce

For ecommerce campaigns, you’re most likely running campaigns using the ‘conversion’ campaign objective and purchase optimization event. Let’s say the products you’re selling are relatively impulse purchases and you have a short sales cycle. This means you want shorter conversion windows, something like a 1-day view and a 1-day click.

This means purchases made within 1 day of just viewing an ad or within 7 days of clicking your ad, will be attributed to that ad.

Example #2: High-price ecommerce

For higher priced items, you might have a longer sales cycle because people need more time to think it over and be convinced your product is worth it. In these cases, you may want to use a wider conversion window, as people may take longer between clicking the ad and making the decision to purchase your product. An appropriate conversion window could be something like a 1-day view and a 7-day click.

How does the conversion window affect Facebook's algorithm for optimizing campaigns?

The conversion windows you choose impact ad delivery in a big way. Let’s say your conversion window for clicks is set to the max at 7 days. This means if someone clicked on your ad 7 days ago and didn’t click or see another one of your ads since and made a purchase today, Facebook will attribute the conversion to that ad. This might make sense depending on your product, but if you’re selling impulse-buy-products, Facebook could be optimizing your ads to deliver to people who are not yet ready-to-buy.

Conversely, if your conversion window is set to 1-day click, Facebook could optimize your ad delivery to target more people who are likely to be ready-to-buy which could reduce wasted ad spend and improve ROAS.

What do all the conversion window options mean?

Facebook has reduced the number of available conversion windows to just the following options:

• 1 day click
• 7 days click
• 1 day click or view
• 7 days click or 1 day view

The 1-day click and 7-days click conversion window means the algorithm will optimize for people who are likely to convert on the same day they clicked on your ad or 7 days after clicking on your ad respectively.

The 1-day click or view conversion window means the algorithm will optimize for people who are likely to convert within 1 day after clicking or viewing your ad. The 7-days click or 1-day view option means that the algorithm will optimize for people who are likely to convert within 7 days after clicking on an ad or viewing it on the same day.

What is '7-day click or 1-day view?'

Facebook automatically sets the conversion window to 7 days click or 1 day view and that’s what I recommend for most advertisers.

If the conversion window is too small for your sales cycle and certain conversions occur outside the conversion window, Facebook won’t use those conversions to further optimize your ad delivery.

For example, if you select the 1-day click option and your customer doesn’t trigger a conversion event within one day after clicking on the ad, even if they do end up converting later, this conversion won’t be used by Facebook to learn more about your customers.

If you have less than 50 conversions per week, you’ll only be able to select the 7-days click or 1 day view option. If you have more than 50 conversions per week, Facebook can optimize for the rest of the options as well.

Where do I change my Facebook ad conversion window?

You can change the Facebook ad conversion window in your ad set settings in campaigns using the conversion objective.

Under the Optimization & Delivery section in your ad set settings, select Conversion Window. At this point, you should see the drop-down menu from which you can choose your conversion window.

Select your conversion window option, and you’re done!

What is the difference between the Facebook ad conversion window and attribution window?

Attribution window is a feature that’s used only for analysis and reporting. For example, in the Ads Manager, you can see what actions users take after watching a video, visiting your website, or clicking on your ad. You can also enable Facebook to track views and click attributions that occur after users interact with your content, and you can choose the time-frame in which Facebook tracks these actions. The default time-frame settings are 1 day for views and 28 days for clicks.

Conversion windows are a feature used for ad set optimization, as this feature automatically changes your ad delivery based on the information it gathers about user behaviors.

Which conversion window should I use?

Facebook recommends using the 7-day click or 1-day view conversion window across the board. However, if you have more than 50 conversions per day and sell low-priced products, the 1 day click window is worth giving a try.

Ecommerce businesses that sell products between $1 and $100 benefit the most from the 1-day click window, because most low-ticket sales are impulse buys that happen right away and don’t require much consideration.

If you offer products or services above the $100 threshold, using the 7-day click or 1-day view conversion window may benefit you the most due to a longer sales cycle.

As always, test each conversion window option to determine which one brings the biggest return on your investment.