Google and Meta both say they made the sale. Who's right?
Add up what each platform reports and you'll often get more sales than you actually had. Here's how to decide where the budget really belongs.
A customer sees your Instagram ad on Monday, searches your brand on Google on Thursday and buys. Meta counts it. Google counts it. Your shop counts one order. Neither platform is lying — they just each see their own part of the journey.
The danger is making budget decisions from inside each platform. Meta prospecting looks expensive in Google Analytics' last-click view; brand Search looks incredible. Cut Meta, and a few weeks later brand searches drop too.
How we look at it
- Start from real business numbers: total orders, revenue and new customers, from your shop or CRM.
- Use each platform's numbers to optimise inside that platform — not to compare against each other.
- Track blended cost per acquisition: total ad spend divided by total new customers.
- Watch how brand search volume moves when Meta spend changes — it's often the clearest sign of what Meta is driving.
When the stakes are high
For larger budgets, a simple holdout test — pausing a channel in one region, or for a few weeks — shows what actually changes in real sales. It's the most honest answer you can get.
Platforms report in their own favour. Judge the whole account by what lands in your bank, not by what each dashboard claims.
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