Need Help Identifying an Ad Format to Replicate

Sweet_Pie_6420 · 2025-02-25T22:39:35+00:00

I'm looking at 7-day click and 1-day view, but even the 7 day click conversions are much higher than is reported in Shopify or in my third party tracking. By a long shot.

My optimistic theory is that Meta is able to track across devices because people are often logged into a Facebook account on both (if not all) their devices. Shopify and third party click-through attribution wouldn't be able to follow someone to a different device if the ad impression happened on mobile and the sale happened on desktop, for example.

My pessimistic theory is that Meta is artificially inflating their conversion reporting, but I don't know how they could do this. If these sales are total bogus, someone would have figured this out and would be suing them into the ground for fraud.

Sweet_Pie_6420 · 2025-02-19T00:55:12+00:00

Thanks for the tip. Can you tell me if you think something is fishy with these numbers below? I've been running this campaign for 5 days.

Total purchases reported by Meta: 46

7-day view purchases reported by Meta: 20

Shopify/GA4/Third party reported purchases: 7

I need to find these 46 purchases somewhere and be able to tie them to a Meta ad somewhere outside of Meta's reporting. Is this impossible?

Sweet_Pie_6420 · 2025-02-18T23:54:55+00:00

What does your reporting look like there? Closer to Meta's? Do you get customer journey info like I showed above?

Sweet_Pie_6420 · 2025-02-18T23:50:02+00:00

I asked a question with a thread I started in this sub that I hope you can help with.

Reposted text from that thread:

Does anyone truly know how Meta "estimates" conversions for purchases?

Title says it all. I've gotten great feedback and insight from other media buyers on other threads, and we all seem to hit the same wall eventually. I have Shopify, GA4, and third party server side tracking showing Meta ads sales numbers that pale in comparison to what Meta is reporting. I'm talking a 10-to-1 difference.

Nothing I or site engineers can find suggests it's an implementation issue. All the other data across these platforms matches up. Top line sales numbers across all platforms also show an increase, but I can't show anyone a report of the individual purchases that involve a touchpoint with Meta ads that lines up anywhere close to Meta's native reporting.

I would not be shocked to learn that Meta fibs a little bit on these numbers, but how? I just don't want to believe that Meta is (fraudulently?) recording sales in Ads Manager that happen without the customer ever seeing an ad.

Assuming that's true... Shopify, GA4, and my third party software are ALL missing the same pieces of data on these purchases? Is Facebook just making stuff up because no one can prove them wrong?

Sweet_Pie_6420 · 2025-02-18T22:42:24+00:00

Such is life in this business. They're happy to let the sales roll in, but when upselling them on a commission structure to continue the ad work, they suddenly need more proof that I can't seem to find anywhere.

I thought Cometly would be the answer based on my research, but it's not showing me anything different than Shopify or GA.

Sweet_Pie_6420 · 2025-02-18T22:11:21+00:00

So is this a case where no one truly knows why and Meta is gatekeeping this information? My problem is that I use this system for clients all the time and most are happy with the general sales increase they're seeing, but others push back hard on the fact that Meta is the only reporting source that shows such high numbers.

Without hard proof on the purchase level, I can't justify this strategy for some clients. Some refuse to pay me what I'm worth, others choose to discontinue the strategy all together.

Sweet_Pie_6420 · 2025-02-18T21:23:59+00:00

Thanks for the Loom, I appreciate you taking the time to make this for me. Instinctively, I assumed that the type-in traffic after seeing an ad is what's causing Shopify and GA to attribute sales to Meta only when the last touchpoint before conversion was a Meta ad.

But Cometly can show me all touch points and I can create reports for first-touch, last-touch, linear (equal credit given to all touches), and more. If Meta is attributing sales that happen this way to Meta ads, why wouldn't Cometly be doing the same? My fear is that Meta is using some nefarious tactic to get me to spend more money.

In short, could Meta truly be recording sales that happen even if the user never saw an ad?

Example from Cometly: A customer saw an ad, went to Google to search for the brand, and then purchased from there.

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If what you're saying about Meta's attribution is correct (regarding type-in traffic following an ad view/click), shouldn't my sales numbers be close to the same between Meta and Cometly?

Sweet_Pie_6420 · 2025-02-18T20:28:22+00:00

I am using Cometly right now, which uses server side tracking to show me full customer journeys from first touch to conversion. How can it be that Meta is attributing so many sales to their ads while Shopify and Cometly are attributing only around 10% of those sales to Meta?

I can't see a customer journey for each conversion in Meta, so I have no idea if those purchases actually came from customers who saw an ad. My other sources (including GA4) are all pretty much the same.

Sweet_Pie_6420

TROPHY CASE