A view-through conversion is a conversion credited to an ad that the user saw but did not click, provided the conversion happened within a set window after the impression. It is used mainly for display and video, where clicks are rare and the argument is that seeing the ad still influenced the later action.
Definition
A view-through conversion is a conversion credited to an ad that the user saw but did not click, provided the conversion happened within a set window after the impression. It is used mainly for display and video, where clicks are rare and the argument is that seeing the ad still influenced the later action.
View-through windows are usually shorter than click windows (often a day, sometimes up to a week) because the influence of an unclicked impression is assumed to decay fast.
View-through conversions are the most generous and the least reliable form of attribution: they include a lot of conversions that would have happened anyway, they can be inflated by cheap, low-attention impressions, and they overlap heavily with other channels' credited conversions, so a view-through number should never be added naively to click-based totals.
In context
For iGaming advertisers, view-through conversions are relevant mainly for display and video brand activity in permitted markets, and the key discipline is to treat them with heavy scepticism. A large view-through count can make a weak display campaign look successful while contributing little incremental value — the users converting had usually already decided, or were reached by a channel that actually drove the action.
Relying on view-through credit to justify display spend is exactly how budget gets misallocated toward cheap, low-attention inventory.
The responsible use: keep view-through windows short, report view-through and click-through conversions separately (never summed), de-duplicate against other channels, and validate any view-through claim with an incrementality holdout rather than trusting the platform's number. Because iGaming display is subject to compliance constraints anyway (permitted markets, no minor-appealing contexts, responsible-gambling messaging), and because attribution in the vertical is already degraded by privacy changes, the practical stance is that view-through is a soft signal at best.
For affiliate-facing content, the framing is that view-through conversions credit unclicked impressions, that they are the least reliable attribution and heavily over-count, that they must be reported separately and de-duplicated, and that any spend justified by view-through should be checked with an incrementality test.
Worked example
An operator's display campaign reports 5,000 click-through and 40,000 view-through conversions. Treating the view-through number sceptically, the team runs a geo holdout: pausing the campaign in matched regions drops registrations only 3%, showing the view-through credit is almost entirely non-incremental.
The campaign is judged on the click-through and incremental figures, and its budget is cut.
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