# This Sneaky Setting RUINS Facebook Ad Campaigns (Easy Fix!)

Channel: Ben Heath
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU27UeeEsfk
Duration: 15 min
Language: English
Words: 3353
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/mU27UeeEsfk

---

[0:00] in this video I'm going to show you a sneaky Facebook ad setting that meta hides and that not a lot of Facebook advertisers know about I'm going to show you what it is and how you should use it to get the best possible results with your Facebook ads I'm talking about the attribution setting and it's far more important than you think so to show you what this setting is how it works and how you should use it I'm in an example Facebook ad account I've created an example um sales campaign a manual sales campaign by the way and I've gone to the adset level now if you're familiar with

[0:27] creating um Facebook ads you'll know that let's say for example you're sending to your website in a sales campaign looking to generate sales performance goals going be maximize number of conversions and then you need to select the conversion event that you're going to optimized for which for most businesses is going to be purchase okay so all fairly standard stuff if you've watched my videos You' probably heard me talk about that um in the past this is just popping up with errors because this is an example ad account okay but if we keep going we can see this little more um option here and if we click on this we will see that there

[0:56] are a few different things under here and today what I really want to talk about is attribution setting okay so if we hover over the little I meta will give us um more information about what this is and how it works I'm going to going to quickly explain attribution refers to the time after which someone interacts with your ads they can then convert in this case purchase and it still be credited back to your ad account your ad set and even the the individual ads so for example we can see here that the default setting is 7-Day click 1day view now what that means is that if someone purchases within seven

[1:30] days of clicking on your ad or within one day of viewing without clicking and that's picked up by the metapixelatron

[1:59] two different audiences you want to see which one generated the most purchases which one generated the best cost for purchase the same applies to ads that way you can make adjustments to your campaigns and learn and Target new audiences and create new ads that are more in line with what you know gets you the best possible results probably even more important than that at this stage we need meta to have this data we know that with a sales campaign when you're optimizing something like purchases meta is going to try and get you as many purchases as possible for them to do that they need to know what purchases

[2:31] look like who's purchasing so they need the the results that your campaigns are generating to be attributed back to your ad account back to the campaigns adsets and ads that you're running so that meta can work out okay we serve this person an ad four times than they bought versus this person that we served twice they didn't buy okay we need to up the impression frequency to get more sales we notice that this person converted in the evening these people we advertised to in the morning hardly any of those converted right let's put more of the ad spend in the evening versus early in the day there's all these little data points

[3:02] that happen automatically that take advantage of meta's AI and machine learning processes that we need meta to do to get us great result and they need to know what our results are um in order to be able to do that so attribution setting is is absolutely key now we've got the default here of 7-Day click one day view um and if we go ahead and click on edit you can see that there are options that we can change this okay so if we clickr we can change that from 7 days to just one day if we wanted to um we've got engage you here which is

[3:32] for video only and if I just click on on the drop down we can either have none or one day interestingly that the default here once we click into edit is um none however they recommend adding in one day I think for most businesses this middle one doesn't really make any difference because it applies to skippable video ads which is only going to be a small percentage of The Impressions that your videos get um so whether you go with none or or one day it's really probably not going to make much difference at all this next one however the view through just like the Click through that is more

[4:02] important okay the default is one day and we can change that to none now my recommendation for most meta advertisers and I'll explain some scenarios where I would change this um in a second but for most meta advertisers is to go with the longest um attribution window possible so in this case it's 7-Day click um and 1 day View and the reason why is because we don't want conversions taking place that meta aren't able to track and depending on your business even with let's say a 7-Day click-through window you might still miss out on a lot of conversions if you offer a bespoke product something that's relatively

[4:36] expensive the sort of thing that someone takes a look at and then they do a bit of shopping around or they have to ask a spouse or a business partner about before they're they're ready to purchase um it's likely that some people are going to take longer than 7 days after they've clicked on one of your ads to actually go through and make that purchase unfortunately even with the longest possible attribution setting we're not going to be able to track those people now if you go ahead and narrow that down and say oh I only want um to count people that have clicked on an ad and then bought within a day

[5:06] you're going to miss out on a lot of purchase again it's going to depend on your business the more expensive what it is that you offer the more likely it is you're going to miss out purchases but you are going to miss out on more purchases which I've already described why that's such an issue both for you as an Advertiser but also for meta being able to optimize um your campaign so I think that 7-Day click absolutely makes sense the one- day view through I think is is also valuable it's either that or none and there's a good chance that someone will be shown an ad but not

[5:35] necessarily click on it but that ad will still have a a part to play in generating a purchase so let's say someone was shown an ad they sort of registered it but they didn't you know they weren't in a situation they were on their phone out and about whatever um they didn't have the time then to go through and make a purchase come through to your website check it out but they sort of clocked oh that looks really good I've made a mental note of the brand name and then later on that day they Google your brand they come through your website and they make a purchase

[6:03] you don't want those people taking that sort of action to not be included and not be attributed to your ad account I think it's really important that they that they're put in there um as well so that's why I want to go with the the longest possible attribution Windows most of the time now if you find that meta is over reporting your results and you're looking at the data within your ad account and you're comparing that to the backend data and you're thinking hang on a minute wait a minute meta is saying we're generating way more purchases than think mattera is generating and this most likely happens

[6:32] when you're advertising on Facebook and Instagram but also using other marketing channels how you've got email marketing or or organic content or whatever also um generating interest and generating purchases and sort of meta um effectively taking credit for those in those scenarios you may well want to remove the view through and change that to none which you can easily do as I've um as I've just done there and what you don't want necessarily is a scenario where someone's been sent an email they're on your email list they were going to purchase anyway and and meta sort of got an ad into to them on Facebook and Instagram and is therefore

[7:02] taking credit for it and that can distort your data now I'm I'm going to provide a bit of clarity on that CU I think that concern is overplayed by most met advertisers but that is a scenario in which we would potentially look to remove you through if we just consistently seeing over reporting then we might look to take that off we're almost certainly not going to reduce um the click-through attribution setting really don't like changing that to one day um unless there's like an exceptional circumstance or something on the lines but the view through with more likely to turn off for that reason now I should quickly explain a scenario in

[7:33] which a lot of meta advertisers find themselves and they think this is a problem to be solved and it's not really it's just something to be understood and managed and that's where it looks like meta is over reporting results but they're actually not and what I mean by that is a lot of people will compare the data they see within their Facebook ad account to the data they're seeing within Google analytics let's say tracking purchases now Google analytics is going to use what's usually referred to as like a last attribution model so the last source that that person came through before they then purchased that's where that purchase going to be

[8:05] attributed within Google analytics whereas meta is going to count a purchase generated as a result of the Facebook and Instagram ads if they either click through or if you've got this turned on view through Within These time frames even if they've also interact with you on other channels or or other ways to come through and make a purchase and a lot of people want to turn those off and they want to do the change I just demonstrated where they turn off you through versions and they changed that To None um and I don't think that's usually the right way to go let's imagine a scenario okay so let's

[8:35] say someone's shown one of your ads on Facebook Instagram they engage with it they watch it they click through they come to your website but they don't purchase they then remember the name they check it out a couple days later they come through to your website organically cuz they remember the brand name they have a look around but they're not quite ready to purchase yet they sign up for your email newsletter but they don't purchase then they're on your email list you email them um a couple times in the next few days they then click through and they then go ahead and and make a purchase now you can't say

[9:04] that the Facebook and Instagram ad wasn't really important in making that sale but Google analytics won't credit Facebook or Instagram with that sale that will be from the email marketing assuming that set up properly in reality the multiple touch points is what generated that conversion it probably needed the ad plus the fact that they found you organically plus the emails to get them over the line and if I think about the people that become leads for our done for you services Facebook Instagram advertising Services often they would have watched a video of mine on YouTube they might be a part of my Facebook group they might be on my email

[9:34] list and it's it's not so much like well what what got the lead it's like well it all helped to get the lead so that's why you're often going to have a discrepancy between what meta reports and what Google analytics reports cuz Google analytics is going to try and attribute that lead that purchase to one platform and that's just unrealistic so most of the time I'm going to leave those on if you're really annoyed by the over reporting and you feel like that's a consistent issue and you you're getting lots of lead sales from other places that you feel better is taking credit for then you can go ahead and turn off

[10:05] that that viewr conversion and bring that down to zero days now before I explain a couple other things about attribution stings are really important I want to quickly let you know about our done for you Facebook and Instagram advertising services so my company can create manage and optimize your ad campaigns for you if you are interested there's a link in the video description below you can click on that go ahead and book a free call with one of my team members they'll tell you uh about the work we've done previously we've probably worked with a business like yours in the past we've worked with all different types of business at this

[10:29] point and we've probably been able to get them great results and should be able to get you great results as well so you can find out more information about that what we charge all that sort of stuff so if you're interested go ahead and book a free call and hopefully we get a chance to work together now for me the painful part about attribution settings is that we used to have 28-day attribution we used to actually have 28-day click and 28 day view through attribution um and I wish they would come back they they were removed primarily for privacy reasons as opposed to anything performance related people

[10:57] didn't like the idea of well hang on you could click on a Facebook ad and then um technically be tracked for a whole month let's let's reduce that down so those changes really came into effect when the iOS 14.5 change happened and meta made a number of changes around that and we used to see it more then but it still happens now where often you will assess the performance of an ad campaign you'll go okay this ad campaign isn't performing as well you will turn it off and then if you come back and take a look at those results later on used to be 28 days but still can happen up to a

[11:26] week later and you then reassess the results and you think oh actually that campaign did better than we thought it did and this is something I don't think a lot of Facebook advertisers think about is that you're always paying upfront right now with for your ads for results that you may well see later down the line now this is absolutely exaggerated with something like an ompr content strategy that I'm a big advocate of but even with a sales campaign where you're running direct to offer trying to generate purchases you could absolutely have someone that clicks today you've paid for to advertise to them today that then purchases in 5 days or 15 days or

[12:00] whenever the results are going to come through later and that's just something to be aware of particularly if you've been running ads for a little while and there are perhaps lots of people within your audience that have you know the three out of the four Impressions they need to purchase you've already managed to do those meta has done those for you you've paid for them but you need that fourth one just to get the purchase and just to get the results it's often why um Facebook ad campaigns perform better over time um there's lots of other reasons for that as well but it's just something to be aware of when it comes

[12:29] to um attribution is that you can if you're if you're assessing over too short a time frame your results can look a lot worse than they are because you've done all the paying but you haven't had all the results yet just something to be uh to be conscious of I also think the logic behind shortening the attribution window um setting either the click or the view through is something that you used to be able to do a lot more um confidently when we had better more accurate tracking pre iOS 14.5 changes and we most likely at that point won weren't Under reporting um often we would have an over reporting situation

[13:02] or something that's fairly accurate now I think that most Facebook ad accounts are more likely to under report than they are over report and if you're in a situation where you're getting any sort of Under reporting you absolutely do not want to be um reducing the attribution setting Windows that would be uh that would be a bad idea and having a nice long attribution setting window is much more important for sales campaigns those that are optimizing for purchases which most should be and than it is with other campaign types right so even if you're generating leads most people are going to click on an ad and become a lead

[13:33] pretty quickly they're not going to take as long because it's a lower commitment sometimes you know if someone's booking a a vacation property for example um yeah okay they might take a bit of time because they're going to show the people they're traveling with oh what do you think of this and should we go with this one and that sort of thing but a lot of leads are quick easy click on become a lead etc etc anything that's within app we don't need to worry about um again too much because people are going to click and then like for example in instant form and then become a lead

[13:58] right away and even some of the other campaign objectives things like engagement um traffic they're taking the action that the campaign is optimizing for there and then so you don't need to worry about attribution settings and things like that um with those really don't worry about it if you're using a lot of the other campaign objectives but if you're running a sales campaign something that is optimizing for an action like that purchase and leads to some extent this is really really important and if you have adjusted it um or sometimes meta defaults it to some of the shorter options then that really can um get in the way if you find that you

[14:29] can't adjust the attribution setting it's probably because you're using a tailored campaign as opposed to a manual campaign I'd recommend you switch over to manual campaign that gives you more control as a Metro Advertiser when it comes to Facebook ads I'm always looking for the highest leverage opportunities and what I mean by that is the things that give me the best possible improvements in my Facebook ad results for the least amount of work well in this video here I share five Facebook ad cheat codes that do exactly that this video is a recording of a speech I gave at a conference recently go ahead and check it out

---

About this transcript
Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com).
ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts.
Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools
How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt