How long after an ad click can you upload a conversion? Google, Meta and LinkedIn windows compared

A lead clicks an ad three weeks ago. Today they buy. Can the ad platform still credit it?

It depends on the platform, and the limits are easy to mix up because they measure different things. Getting this wrong is behind a lot of "it doesn't work" threads, so let me lay it out clearly.

Google Ads: it ignores offline conversions uploaded more than 90 days after the click. For enhanced conversions for leads, the window is 63 days. The clock starts at the click.

LinkedIn: it accepts conversions up to 90 days old, and CSV rows older than that are dropped.

Meta: this one is different, and it's the one people trip over. The limit isn't about the click. Meta rejects events sent more than 7 days after they happened. Then it matches the event to a person who interacted with your ad. The clock starts at the event, not the click.

So the same three-week-old click behaves three different ways. On Google, it's fine as long as you kept the click ID. On LinkedIn, it's fine too. On Meta, what matters is that you send the sale within 7 days of it happening, and that it carries a good match key, not how old the click was.

Here's a decision guide by sales cycle length. Under 7 days: any process works, even a daily file. 7 to 63 days: Google and LinkedIn are fine, Meta needs each stage sent promptly, so avoid batches. 63 to 90 days: only click ID uploads on Google still reach, so protect the click ID above everything. Over 90 days: no platform will credit the closed deal, so send an earlier stage, like booked or qualified, while the click is still in range.

A common trap: measuring your cycle as an average. If your average is 40 days but a quarter of your deals take 100, that quarter is invisible to every platform, and those are often your biggest deals. Look at the longest cycle that matters, not the mean.

Three made-up sales from the same campaign make it concrete.

Sale A: click on day 0, sale on day 5. Every platform can credit it.

Sale B: click on day 0, sale on day 50. Google and LinkedIn can credit it if you kept the click ID and send it by day 90. Meta can only take it if you send the sale within 7 days of day 50, which means it has to go out promptly, not in next month's file.

Sale C: click on day 0, sale on day 120. No platform will credit the closed sale, because the click is out of range everywhere. The only way the campaign learns anything from customer C is if you sent an earlier stage while the click was still in range, like a booked call on day 30.

Notice what this says about batches. They hurt sale B on Meta, and they can't help sale C anywhere. Only live sends and earlier stages fix both.

Where are you losing sales to these windows? Long B2B cycles, big-ticket purchases, seasonal leads?