Question 1

How do I understand attribution gaps between what ad platforms claim and actual sales?

Accepted Answer

An attribution gap is the difference between the conversions an ad platform reports and the sales your business actually recorded. To understand it, stop trusting a single source: put the platform-reported number (what Google Ads or Meta claims), the analytics-measured number (what GA4 recorded), and the store-confirmed number (the real orders or subscriptions in your backend) side by side for the same date window. The gap between them tells you how much of each platform's claimed performance is real. jujugrowth stores all three numbers per campaign and date automatically, so the gap is visible instead of hidden — and you can see which ad spend actually produced paying customers rather than just a pixel event.

Question 2

Why do ad platforms report more conversions than I actually got?

Accepted Answer

Ad platforms count conversions using their own attribution windows and view-through/click models, and each platform credits itself for the same sale — so Meta, Google and TikTok can all claim the same order. They also count non-revenue actions (add-to-cart, lead form, app event) as 'conversions'. The result is double-counting and inflation: a platform may report 50 conversions when your store recorded 10 paying customers. The only way to size the inflation is to reconcile platform numbers against verified sales from your CRM, payment processor or order system.

Question 3

What three numbers should I compare to close the attribution gap?

Accepted Answer

Compare (1) platform-claimed conversions — what each ad platform's pixel reports; (2) analytics-measured conversions — what GA4 or your web analytics recorded with its own attribution; and (3) commerce-truth conversions — the actual orders, signups or MRR confirmed in your store or billing backend. The platform number is usually the highest and the store number is the truth. jujugrowth keeps these as three separate stored values per concept and never collapses them into one 'trust me' figure, so you can always see where measurement breaks down.

Question 4

How does jujugrowth detect and surface attribution gaps automatically?

Accepted Answer

jujugrowth connects your ad platforms, GA4 and your backend read-only, then stores the platform-claimed, analytics-measured and store-confirmed conversion numbers side by side for every campaign and day. When the platform-reported figure runs well ahead of confirmed sales, or when revenue your backend recorded never reached analytics, it flags the gap with the dates and the likely cause — a too-wide attribution window, a broken server-side purchase event, or cross-device loss — so you fix the measurement before it skews budget decisions.

Question 5

What does a broken attribution setup look like in real data?

Accepted Answer

A common pattern is revenue that is invisible to analytics: real sales happen but the server-side purchase event never reaches GA4, so analytics shows $0 and your ads have nothing to optimize toward. Another is a session spike with almost no recorded conversions, meaning the signup or purchase event is firing wrong. On our own businesses in June 2026, jujugrowth flagged $69 of real subscription and credit sales over five days that GA4 reported as $0, and a day where sessions jumped to 606 (from ~18–50/day) with only 1 signup recorded — both surfaced with dates and the fix before a launch's worth of conversions went uncounted.

Attribution gaps: what ad platforms claim vs. what you actually sold

See platform-claimed, GA4-measured and store-confirmed sales side by side

Why the platform number is always the highest

The three numbers to compare

jujugrowth's mechanic: never trust one source

Real findings on our own businesses (June 2026)

Free to start, honest by design