“Appearing only for the Display Network, View-Through Conversions happen when a customer views your image or rich media ad before converting, but never actually clicks on the ad. If these customers later convert, this metric counts their conversions as “View-Through Conversions.” This conversion type automatically excludes conversions from people who’ve also clicked your Search ads.”I – Jennifer Johnstone
The advantage to view-through conversions in Google Ads (ads A and C in the graphic) is that you can talk more to the value of a Display campaign when it comes to your branding or awareness impact. Display campaigns have cheap clicks and low post-click engagement, but with the View-Through conversion model, we can report on how many times our ads were part of the conversion process.
Likewise, Assisted Conversions (ads B and D) provide additional context for accounts. An assisted conversion occurs when a user sees your ad, returns to your site through another channel and then converts. You can find this information in Analytics under Conversions < Multi-Channel Funnels < Assisted Conversions. Once there, you have the option of seeing how many times your ads assisted other channels before the conversion. There are two sub-categories to this:
- Click Assisted Conversions: someone clicked on your ad but it was not their last click before a conversion. It contributed, but didn’t get final attribution.
- Impression Assisted Conversion: Someone saw an impression of your ad, did not click at that time, but ultimately converted.
The metrics you report on should be dictated by the goals of your business model or marketing strategy. View-Through and Assisted conversions can be very helpful in branding and awareness campaigns as well as provide you with additional context on how your other campaigns are performing and which other channels they integrate well with.
