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Understanding Meta v.s. Cometly Attribution
When reviewing your campaign performance, you may notice that Meta reports more conversions than Cometly. This difference is due to the way each platform attributes conversions. Meta includes View-Through Conversions, which count users who may have only viewed your ad without clicking it. Cometly, on the other hand, provides Click-Through Attribution, focusing solely on users who actively engaged with your ad. This ensures more reliable and actionable insights for optimizing your campaigns.
In this article, we’ll explain why Cometly’s data is better suited for performance-driven decisions and how you can configure your Meta Ads Manager to identify View-Through Conversions for comparison.
Why Cometly Attribution Data Differs from Meta's Data (and Why That’s a Good Thing)
When analyzing the performance of your advertising campaigns, it's important to understand why Cometly's attribution data might differ from what you see in Meta Ads Manager. Both platforms provide valuable insights, but they approach attribution differently, leading to variations in reported conversions.
Meta’s Approach to Attribution
Meta Ads Manager often includes View-Through Conversions, which occur when someone views your ad but doesn’t click on it, and then converts later. This is a valuable way of measuring your ad’s influence on potential customers, even if they didn’t engage directly with it.
While View-Through Conversions offer insights into how ads impact overall visibility and brand awareness, they don’t always represent direct, click-based engagement.
Cometly’s Click-Based Attribution Focus
Cometly specializes in Click-Based Attribution (the way the ad platforms used to be before privacy changes) providing a clearer and more direct understanding of how your ads are driving actionable engagement. By focusing solely on click-based conversions, Cometly eliminates any ambiguity around whether the conversion was influenced by an ad click or a simple impression.
This approach helps advertisers make decisions based on tangible user actions, ensuring that every conversion tracked is tied directly to a customer’s interaction with your ad.
Why Look at Cometly for Decision-Making?
Actionable Insights: Cometly gives you precise, click-based data that ties conversions directly to ad engagement. This helps you allocate your ad spend to campaigns that are genuinely driving results.
Complementary Data: While Meta’s View-Through Conversions provide a broader perspective, Cometly’s data is purposefully streamlined for actionable insights. If you want to evaluate View-Through Conversions, you can always view them in Meta Ads Manager.
Customizable Attribution Models: Cometly lets you analyze data your way—whether through click attribution or other advanced models you choose to set up.
By combining Cometly’s detailed insights with Meta’s broader view-through data, you can create a more holistic strategy while relying on Cometly for direct decision-making.
Facebook and 'Statistical Modeling': What You Need to Know
With the iOS update, Facebook has faced significant challenges in reporting accurate conversion details for users who have opted out of tracking. Currently, over 85% of iOS users worldwide have chosen to opt out.
To address this gap, Facebook has introduced a new attribution model called Statistical Modeling. This approach allows Facebook to populate your Ads Manager with estimated data, providing an approximation of your ad performance.
What Does Statistical Modeling Mean?
Statistical Modeling involves estimating over 85% of conversion data for users who have opted out of tracking. While this is a creative solution to bridge the data gap, it's important to understand that this data is largely an educated guess. Facebook even labels it as "estimated" in your Ads Manager, as highlighted in the screenshot below.
By understanding this distinction, you can better interpret your Meta Ads Manager results and rely on tools like Cometly for accurate, click-based conversion data.
Here is a link to the article on Facebook's website about how they use statistical modeling.
What to Do If Meta Shows More Conversions
It’s not uncommon to see higher conversion counts in Meta due to its inclusion of View-Through Conversions. This doesn’t mean Cometly isn’t working—it’s simply looking at the data through a different lens.
If you’re interested in seeing View-Through Conversions alongside your Click-Based Conversions, you can always refer to Meta Ads Manager for that information. Cometly, meanwhile, will provide the direct, click-based conversions you need to optimize campaigns with confidence.
How to Configure Columns in Meta Ads Manager to See View-Through Conversions
If you are using Meta browser events alongside Cometly's server-side Conversion API, it’s important to understand how Meta attributes conversions. Meta often includes View-Through Conversions—instances where someone simply viewed your ad but didn’t click on it. This approach can lead to over-reporting conversions in Meta that may not align with actual user actions.
In contrast, Cometly uses click-through attribution, giving you a more precise view of conversions based on direct user engagement. You can even explore each contact’s journey in Cometly to see their exact click touchpoints.
To better understand which conversions are attributed as View-Through in Meta, you can adjust the column settings in your Ads Manager. This allows you to see the breakdown between View-Through and Click-Through Conversions for more accurate reporting and decision-making. Follow the steps below to customize your view in Meta.
1. In your Meta ads manager, click on Columns and then click Compare attribution settings
2. Select all attribution settings and click Apply
3. Inside Meta ads manager you can now see the conversions that are view-through conversions
