I am a firm advocate for measuring click based conversions when it comes to performance focused online marketing with various attribution models applied depending on the goal. With that said however, I’m also open to the fact that like real world billboards; display and remarketing campaigns can generate view-through or post impression conversions. For those that don’t know, a view-through conversion is where someone has seen your advert at some stage and then has come back to your website or landing page direct or via another source and converted into a lead or a sale.
The main issue with measuring view-through conversions however is that you can’t actually tell if the prospect seeing the ad was the reason they came back and converted, or if it was another marketing campaign (the one they clicked perhaps) that influenced their decision. They may have even come back and converted if there was no marketing turned on at all. Without a clear and accurate view of the sources, campaigns, ads or targeting that are delivering actual results it becomes hard to correctly attribute the conversion and then optimise and improve your overall marketing results.
