Your Taboola numbers look good? Maybe they don’t. Check Click vs. View attribution.

Quick heads-up for anyone running Taboola Ads:

I’m still surprised how many advertisers don’t realize this.

By default, when you look at conversions/purchases inside the Taboola Ads Manager, you can easily end up looking at Click + View attributed conversions combined.

And that can make your performance look significantly better than it actually is.

Here’s why this matters:

Imagine you’re running a native ad that leads to an advertorial on a completely different domain.

Your ad says something like:

No brand name. No product name. No recognizable branding.

Someone sees the ad on a publisher site but doesn’t click it.

Later that day, they purchase your product after coming through Meta, Google, email, direct traffic, or another touchpoint.

Depending on the attribution window, Taboola may still count that purchase as a View-through conversion.

Did Taboola really generate that sale?

Maybe it contributed somehow.

But if the person:

never clicked the ad

never visited your advertorial

never saw your product

couldn’t even identify the brand from the creative

…I would be very careful about giving Taboola full credit for that purchase.

This is especially important with native ads where the creative itself sometimes creates almost zero traditional brand exposure.

Here’s a real example of why this matters

https://preview.redd.it/3z4d6ryh6omh1.png?width=1189&format=png&auto=webp&s=3fe86cf12a455e8e5a47cdd6246479483772821a

Take a look at this example.

At first glance, the campaigns looks great:

Total ROAS: 3.26x / 326,81%

If I only looked at the total column on the left, I might conclude:

But once you split the results into Click vs. View attribution, the picture changes significantly.

The Click-attributed ROAS is much lower, while a large part of the reported performance comes from View-attributed purchases.

And that distinction matters.

If most of your purchases are attributed because someone simply saw your Taboola ad somewhere on a publisher site

without ever clicking it

you should at least question how much credit Taboola really deserves for those sales.

Especially if your creative:

doesn’t show the brand

doesn’t show the product

is basically just a curiosity/problem-based native ad

sends users to an advertorial on a separate domain

In that situation, someone could see the ad for a second, never interact with it, and then purchase later through Meta, Google, email, direct traffic, or another channel.

Taboola can still attribute that purchase as a View conversion if it falls within the attribution window.

That doesn’t mean the View had zero impact.

But treating that conversion the same as someone who actually:

clicked the ad → read the advertorial → visited the product page → purchased

is something I would be very careful with.

And this is where it gets dangerous:

If you only look at the combined 3.26 ROAS, you might start scaling a campaign that appears highly profitable inside Taboola while the actual click-driven performance is considerably weaker.

So before scaling based on the ROAS shown in the reporting view:

Always split Click and View attribution first.

Check your Click vs. View conversions

This is turned of by default

Inside the Taboola reporting table, make sure you enable the columns that allow you to look at Click-attributed and View-attributed conversions separately.

Don’t just look at the total Purchase or ROAS number.

The standard attribution setup you’ll commonly see is roughly:

Click: up to 30 days View: 24 hours

Go to your Tracking Settings and click on the small pencil next to the event

That distinction can completely change how you evaluate a campaign.

A campaign showing:

20 purchases

might suddenly look very different when you discover that it’s:

5 Click purchases 15 View purchases

I’m not saying View conversions are worthless.

They aren’t necessarily.

But I definitely wouldn’t value a 24h View conversion the same way as a conversion after someone actually clicked the ad, consumed the advertorial and went through the funnel.

There’s another Taboola attribution detail people miss

This one is also important when evaluating daily performance.

Conversions can be reported back against the day of the original ad interaction, rather than simply showing up on the day the purchase actually happened.

Example:

Someone clicks your Taboola ad on Monday.

They don’t buy immediately.

They come back and purchase on Friday.

That purchase can then appear attributed back to Monday’s performance inside your reporting.

Meaning Monday’s numbers can continue improving several days later.

That’s why judging Taboola purely day-by-day can be misleading.

If yesterday looked terrible, that doesn’t necessarily mean yesterday’s traffic was terrible.

Some of those clicks simply haven’t converted yet.

Personally, I’d always keep looking back at roughly the previous 7 days and see how the performance matures before making aggressive decisions based on a single day.

Especially if your product has a longer consideration window.

TL;DR:

If you’re running Taboola:

Don’t blindly trust the total Purchase or ROAS column.

Separate Click vs. View attributed purchases.

Be especially skeptical of View conversions when your ad contains little or no branding.

A strong blended ROAS can look very different once you isolate Click-attributed performance.

Remember that delayed purchases can be attributed back to the original interaction date.

Re-check the previous days before deciding whether a campaign works or doesn’t.

A 3.26x ROAS looks great.

But if most of that performance comes from View-through conversions, you should understand that before deciding to scale.

Small reporting detail.

Potentially a very big difference in how you evaluate your actual Taboola performance.