Advertisers have been challenged to determine the impact of video ad campaigns on conversions when they can’t compare them across ad formats.

On Friday, YouTube said that by the end of the year it will make engaged-view conversions a standard way to measure conversions for TrueView skippable in-stream ads, Local campaigns and App campaigns.

Nicky Rettke, director, product manager of YouTube Ads, believes engaged-view conversions (EVC) provide a better way to monitor the non-click conversion metric because it measures the conversions that take place after someone views 10 seconds or more of a skippable ad — but doesn’t click, and then converts within a set amount of days.

It is also a better way to measure conversions than view-through conversions (VTCs), an industry standard that measures the conversions that take place after a person views an impression of an ad, but doesn’t click, he explains in a blog post.

The goal is to provide transparency in reporting across clicks and engaged-view conversions, aggregated and anonymously, and new configurability options for conversion measurement.

What led to the decision? Large-scale incrementality studies were conducted during several years that confirmed the causal impact of video ad campaigns were undervalued when considering clicks alone.

The studies also “determined the default attribution window for engaged-view conversions,” Rettke wrote. “The default attribution window is tailored based on consumer behavior for each campaign goal and is set to three days for TrueView for action, two days for App campaigns for Install and one day for App campaigns for engagement. But you know your business best, and will be able to set the right attribution window based on your customers’ behavior and campaign goals in the coming year.”