View through conversions have been around for quite some time. The simple premise is that a media channel tracks when a person sees your ad or content and then, some time later, when they go to your site and convert, the tracking tag on your site sends data back to the media channel indicating that a conversion took place. The channel then shows that the user saw the content and later converted, even if they did not click.
LinkedIn is now launching this metric. As a channel where people do a lot of research, read articles and general share information, knowing if someone saw your ad, or content and then ended up converting, this can be valuable. In B2B, direct conversions are not always the norm, and attribution can be a real challenge for advertisers with less resources. The view through metrics help provide a bit more insight.