Facebook has announced that it is retiring the 28 days attribution window option for Facebook ads. Post that, the attribution window will be its already existing 7-day option as default settings. This means that the advertisers will not be able to track direct actions based on their campaigns for a longer period.
Facebook attribution models enable advertisers to measure certain responses related to the campaign based on the rules set by advertisers. Currently, by default, Facebook Attribution selects a last-touch model with a 1-day impression and a 28-day click window which will soon change to a 7-day window.
For example, if you were to select purchase as your conversion, and apply this default attribution model and attribution window, your reporting will reflect purchases that can be attributed by Facebook to the last ad click that happened within 28 days prior to purchase or the last ad impression that occurred within one day of purchase, whichever happened last.
Facebook attribution models provide more specific insights and allow marketers to obtain more information on the actual impact the ad had.
By the official email announcement sent directly to advertisers, it explains,
“Upcoming digital privacy initiatives affecting multiple browsers will limit business’s ability to measure people’s interactions across domains and devices. Among those limitations is the ability for businesses to attribute conversion events back to an ad over longer attribution windows.”
Though not explicitly but the email refers to Chrome’s intention to eliminate third- party cookies in the near future. Due to the changes in data tracking policy, Facebook will no longer be able to provide a 28-day attribution window but a 7-day window option for direct response performance.
The change will affect everyone. However, it will highly impact advanced Facebook marketers who run large-scale campaigns as well as the automated systems that work out Facebook ad spend based on certain events.
The changes will come into effect on 12th October 2020. Facebook recommends advertisers as well as it would be worth to download all the historical data before the change for future reference.
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