Optimise SaaS trials to activated accounts
A software company with a free trial can give an ad platform three events to bid on: the trial sign-up, the first product action that predicts payment, and the first payment. Sign-ups arrive on the day of the click and in large numbers, but some come from people who never use the product again. Payments are what the business keeps, but they come after the trial ends and in small numbers. Meta counts click-through conversions for at most 7 days after a link click, so a payment on day 14 of a trial never reaches its optimisation. Google Ads allows click-through windows of up to 90 days and accepts imported conversions up to 90 days after the click. For most trials the workable bid event is activation: a product action in the first week that your own data links to payment. Report payments next to it on every channel, and check each month that activated accounts from each channel still go on to pay.
Executive findings
- 1
Meta’s standard attribution setting counts click-through events that happen within 1 or 7 days of a link click and view-through events within 1 day of an impression, and it optimises delivery for the windows selected.
Documented: official source. Scope: Meta Business Help Center, attribution settings, as of . [1]
- 2
Meta marks an ad set Learning limited when it is unlikely to get about 50 optimisation events in the week after its last significant edit, and suggests choosing an optimisation event that happens more often.
Documented: official source. Scope: Meta Business Help Center, Learning limited, as of . [2]
- 3
Google Ads applies a 30-day click-through conversion window unless the advertiser changes it, and allows up to 90 days depending on the conversion source. Offline conversions uploaded more than 90 days after the last click are not imported; for enhanced conversions for leads the limit is 63 days.
Documented: official source. Scope: Google Ads Help, conversion windows and offline conversion imports, as of . [5]
- 4
Since 15 June 2026 the Google Ads API no longer accepts new adopters of offline conversion imports, including enhanced conversions for leads. Google names the Data Manager API as the primary API for these imports; developers who were already importing can keep using the Google Ads API while they move.
Documented: official source. Scope: Google Ads Developer Blog, post of 15 May 2026, as of . [7]
- 5
In our illustrative model, 6,000 a month brings about 28 activations and 7 paying accounts a week. At that budget payments never reach Meta’s guide of about 50 events a week; activations reach it at about 10,800 a month.
Illustrative model, not a benchmark. Scope: FOCUSADS worked model with labelled assumptions, not a benchmark, as of
Method and limitations
- Question
- Which trial event should a software company give Google, Meta and LinkedIn to bid on: the sign-up, the activated account or the first payment?
- Written for
- Founders, growth leads and performance marketers at software companies that sell through a free trial or free plan, and the analysts who send conversion data to ad platforms.
- Decision at stake
- Which event to set as the bid event on each platform, which events to report next to it, and what budget the chosen event needs.
- Sources
- Meta Business Help Center pages on attribution settings and Learning limited, the Meta Conversions API reference, Google Ads Help on conversion windows, offline conversion imports and primary and secondary conversion actions, the Google Ads Developer Blog on the Data Manager API, and LinkedIn’s Conversions API documentation on Microsoft Learn.
- Period
- Official pages as published on 3 November 2026.
- Markets
- The markets we serve where Google, Meta and LinkedIn ads run. In mainland China, where Google and Meta ads do not serve users, the platform sections do not apply.
- Definitions
- Trial sign-up: a new account created on a free trial or free plan.
- Activated account: a trial account that, within its first 7 days, completes a product action that your own data links to later payment.
- Paid account: a trial account that starts a paid subscription.
- Bid event: the conversion a campaign optimises for, called the primary conversion action in Google Ads and the optimisation event on Meta.
- Limitations
- We publish no trial, activation or payment rates for software. They differ by product, price and market, so use your own.
- Platform windows and import routes change, as Google’s June 2026 move to the Data Manager API shows. Check the live pages before building a set-up.
- Sending hashed email addresses or other user data to ad platforms is processing of personal data. In the UK and the EEA it needs a lawful basis and the consent signals each platform asks for. This is not legal advice.
Three events with three delays
FOCUSADS view
A free trial produces three events an ad platform can learn from. The sign-up happens on the day of the click. Activation, as we define it here, is a product action in the first 7 days, such as inviting a colleague or connecting a data source. Payment comes when the trial ends, which for a 14-day trial is two weeks or more after the click.
The earlier the event, the more of them there are and the less each one says about revenue. The platform rules below decide which of the three a campaign can use.
How long each platform waits
Documented: official source
Meta’s standard attribution setting counts click-through events for 1 or 7 days after a link click and view-through events for 1 day after an impression, and it optimises delivery for the windows chosen. A payment on day 14 of a trial falls outside both, so Meta can neither credit the ad for it nor learn from it. Events sent through Meta’s Conversions API must also arrive within 7 days of the time they happened, or the whole request is rejected.
Google Ads uses a 30-day click-through window unless the advertiser changes it, and allows up to 90 days depending on the conversion source. Conversions imported from a billing system or CRM are accepted up to 90 days after the last click, or 63 days for enhanced conversions for leads. A 14-day or 30-day trial fits inside those limits.
LinkedIn’s Conversions API accepts events with a timestamp in the past 90 days. Post-click windows can be 1, 7, 28, 30 or 90 days, and 180 or 365 days for some conversion types, including purchase and lead.
Volume decides what bidding can learn
Documented: official source
Meta marks an ad set Learning limited when it is unlikely to get about 50 optimisation events in the week after its last significant edit, and advises choosing an event that happens more often. Google describes a learning phase of 7 to 14 days for Smart Bidding. It bids only on primary conversion actions; secondary actions appear in the All conversions column and do not affect bidding unless they belong to a custom goal.
A campaign that brings seven paying accounts a week gives Meta too little to learn from, whatever the attribution window. In the model below, the same campaign brings four times as many activations.
Google’s import route changed in June
Documented: official source
Since 15 June 2026 the Google Ads API has refused new adopters of offline conversion imports, including enhanced conversions for leads, with an error. Google names the Data Manager API as the primary route for these imports. Developers who were already importing can keep using the Google Ads API while they move to Data Manager. A company sending activations or payments from its own servers to Google for the first time should build on the Data Manager API.
Our recommendation
FOCUSADS view
Make activation the optimisation event on Meta and the primary conversion action in Google Ads and LinkedIn. Choose the action from your own data: compare trial accounts that paid with those that did not, and pick the first-week action that separates them most clearly. Send it from your server as soon as it happens.
Report trial sign-ups and paid accounts next to it. In Google Ads, import paid accounts as a secondary conversion action, so they appear in All conversions without changing bidding. Each month, compare by channel the share of activated accounts that go on to pay. If one channel’s activated accounts pay far less often, its activation count overstates it, so judge that channel on cost per paid account.
Where a Meta ad set gets well under 50 activations a week, combine ad sets before falling back to sign-ups. If you do bid on sign-ups, judge the campaign on cost per activated account, never on cost per trial.
Worked model: events per week at one budget
Illustrative model, not a benchmark
One software company runs a 14-day free trial and spends 6,000 a month on one Meta campaign. The table counts each event per month and per week.
| Line | Value | How it is calculated |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly media spend | 6,000 | Assumption |
| Cost per trial sign-up | 20 | Assumption |
| Trial sign-ups | 300 | 6,000 ÷ 20 |
| Share of trials activated within 7 days | 40% | Assumption, from product data |
| Activated accounts | 120 | 300 × 40% |
| Share of activated accounts that pay | 25% | Assumption, from billing data |
| Paid accounts | 30 | 120 × 25% |
| Cost per activated account | 50 | 6,000 ÷ 120 |
| Cost per paid account | 200 | 6,000 ÷ 30 |
| Activations per week | 28 | 120 ÷ 4.33, rounded |
| Paid accounts per week | 7 | 30 ÷ 4.33, rounded |
| Monthly spend for about 50 activations a week | 10,800 | 50 × 4.33 × 50, rounded |
Assumptions
- All figures are placeholders in one currency; use your own trial and billing data.
- Events are counted in the month the trial started, and a month is taken as 4.33 weeks.
- The model assumes cost per activated account stays at 50 as spend rises; check this with a spend test.
What we would test, in order
| Step | Measured by | Counts as success when |
|---|---|---|
| Compare the first-week product actions of trial accounts that paid with those that did not, and write down one activation definition. | Payment rate of activated accounts against all other trial accounts. | Activated accounts pay at least twice as often as the rest. |
| Send activation from your server to Meta, Google Ads and LinkedIn as the bid event, and paid accounts as a reported event. | Activations counted in each platform against your product database. | Counts match within 10% for two weeks. |
| Run the campaigns on activation for at least four weeks without significant edits. | Cost per paid account by channel, from billing data. | Keep activation as the bid event while cost per paid account is no higher than in the sign-up period. |
Before you change the bid event
If any answer is no, fix it first.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Is activation defined from your own data on paid and unpaid trials? | An action picked by guesswork may not predict payment |
| Do most activated accounts activate within 7 days of the click? | Meta’s longest click-through window is 7 days |
| Are activations sent from your server within 7 days of happening? | Meta’s Conversions API rejects older events |
| Does each Meta ad set get about 50 activations a week? | Below that, Meta reports the ad set as Learning limited |
| Are paid accounts reported next to activations on every channel? | Activation can stop predicting payment on one channel |
How this connects to our method: Build the conversion infrastructure first
References
- About attribution models and attribution settings, Meta Business Help Center, accessed
- About Learning limited, Meta Business Help Center, accessed
- Server event parameters (Conversions API), Meta for Developers, accessed
- About conversion windows, Google Ads Help, accessed
- Guidelines for importing offline conversions, Google Ads Help, accessed
- About primary and secondary conversion actions, Google Ads Help, accessed
- Changes to Offline Click Conversion Import Support in the Google Ads API, Google Ads Developer Blog, accessed
- Conversions API (LinkedIn Marketing API), Microsoft Learn / LinkedIn, accessed