Meta says
it's theirs.
So does
Google.
Your store recorded one sale. Dashcrab Attribution maps each customer's full journey and splits every conversion across the channels that drove it, without counting it twice.
Installs with Google Tag Manager · 7 models side by side
01 · The problem
Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and LinkedIn each measure their own conversions, with their own window and their own model, and none of them sees what the others did. That's why what they report, added up, almost always comes out higher than what you actually sold.
| Platform | Default window | Claims |
|---|---|---|
| Meta Ads | 7 days after a click · 1 day after a view | 41 |
 Google Ads |
30 days after a click | 38 |
 TikTok Ads |
7 days after a click · 1 day after a view | 17 |
 LinkedIn Ads |
90 days after a click · 90 days after a view | 6 |
| Sum of what the platforms report | 102 | |
| Real purchases in your store | 64 | |
Illustrative 30-day example. Default windows per each platform's documentation as of September 2026. Every account can change them.
02 · Why it happens
01
Meta only sees clicks on Meta, and Google only sees clicks on Google. If someone touched both before buying, both count the whole sale. Nobody deduplicates between them.
02
Meta looks back 7 days from a click, Google Ads 30 and LinkedIn up to 90, plus 90 from a view. The same purchase lands in several windows at once, and every platform claims it.
03
Meta keeps a purchase up to 1 day after someone saw or liked the ad, even if they came back through another channel. On YouTube, Google Ads counts engaged views from up to 3 days before. Nobody clicked, and the report counts it anyway.
04
They see the ad on their phone and buy on their laptop. Without a shared identity those are two different people, and the first touch is lost.
05
Since iOS 14.5 every app has to ask permission to track, and Safari deletes JavaScript cookies after 7 days without a visit, or after 24 hours if the person arrived from an ad. What platforms can no longer see, they fill in with modeled conversions.
06
Google Ads and GA4 split credit with data-driven, Meta with its own rules, and your CRM usually keeps the first or the last touch. Comparing those numbers means comparing different rules.
03 · A real journey
Four touches in one week and a single USD 120 purchase. This is how the customer lived it, and this is how each platform reports it.
Sees a Reel, clicks and browses the product.
Searches the brand on Google and comes in through the ad.
Opens this week's email and clicks the offer.
Types the store's address and comes back.
One single sale in your store.
Click 6 days ago, inside its 7-day window.
Click 4 days ago, inside its 30-day window.
Email click 2 days ago, inside its window.
One purchase, split across the four touches according to the model you pick.
04 · How it works
Dashcrab Attribution builds each person's journey with its own first-party pixel, links every conversion to the touches that came before it and splits the credit among them. The total per channel never exceeds the real total.
01 · Pixel
It installs as a Custom HTML tag, without touching your site's code, and weighs 5.6 KB compressed. It records every session with its source, medium, campaign and click ID (gclid, fbclid, ttclid, msclkid, li_fat_id). Channel, exclusions and bots are decided on the server, not in the browser.
02 · Conversions
Mark as a conversion any event the pixel already records, like a form or a thank-you page, or send purchases server-to-server from Stripe, your store or your CRM. Every submission is idempotent, and refunds adjust the value without deleting the conversion.
03 · Identity
When someone leaves their email, their visits from phone and laptop merge into one journey and their conversions are recalculated. The email is matched as a SHA-256 hash, and you can choose not to store it in plain text.
04 · Reports
With your campaigns' daily spend you get conversions, value, ROAS and CPA by channel, source, medium or campaign, under any model. Every conversion opens up to show its full path and how much credit each touch received.
05 · Attribution models
No model is the truth: each one answers a different question. That's why Dashcrab calculates all of them and shows them side by side. Here's how the USD 120 purchase from the example gets split.
All credit to the first touch. Answers which channel opens the conversation.
All credit to the last touch. It's what most tools show by default.
Like last click, but Direct only gets the credit when there was no other channel.
Equal shares for every touch in the journey.
More weight closer to the purchase: weight halves every 7 days going back, and the half-life is configurable.
40% to the first, 40% to the last and 20% split across the middle. Values whoever opens and whoever closes.
Markov chains on your own journeys: each channel gets how much conversions drop if it's removed from the path. It also uses the journeys that didn't convert.
The pixel sees clicks and visits, not impressions. What someone saw and didn't click can't be observed from your site, and we don't make it up.
Safari deletes JavaScript cookies after 24 hours if the person arrived from an ad. With the pixel served from your own domain, identity lasts 400 days.
Without an email or a login, two devices are still two people.
07 · FAQ
It means splitting the credit for each conversion across every touch that came before it (ads, searches, emails, direct visits) instead of giving all of it to just one. In Dashcrab Attribution every conversion is worth 1 and gets split across its touches according to the model you choose.
Because each platform counts as its own any conversion that happens inside its window after a click, or a view, on its ads, and none of them deduplicates against the others. If someone went through Meta and Google before buying, both keep the whole sale. On top of that come view-through and modeled conversions.
GA4 shows you one model at a time, and since November 2023 it no longer offers first click, linear, time decay or position-based: data-driven and two last-click variants remain. Dashcrab Attribution uses its own first-party pixel, links devices by email, receives server-to-server conversions from your backend with refunds included and shows seven models side by side, with each campaign's spend to calculate ROAS and CPA.
It depends on the question. First click shows which channel opens the conversation, last click which one closes it, position-based and time decay split between the two, and data-driven estimates each channel's contribution from your own journeys, including those that didn't convert. The value is in comparing them: a channel that wins on first click and loses on last click opens demand that another one closes.
With a Custom HTML tag in Google Tag Manager, without touching your site's code. Conversions are marked from events the pixel already records or sent from your backend through the API. So that Safari doesn't delete the identity, it's best to serve the pixel through a proxy on your own domain.
Yes, with a caveat. Safari deletes cookies written by JavaScript after 7 days without a visit to the site, and after 24 hours if the person arrived through a link with an ad network's click ID. With the pixel on Dashcrab's host or on your own subdomain that limit applies, while in Chrome and Firefox identity lasts 400 days. With a proxy on your own domain the server writes an HttpOnly cookie, and identity lasts 400 days in Safari too.
No. The pixel sees what happens on your site: visits and clicks with their source. An impression that didn't end in a click can't be observed from there, so we don't estimate it. To measure the effect of what gets seen but not clicked, the right approach is to combine it with incrementality tests or media mix models.
The pixel respects Google Tag Manager's Consent Mode, records the names of a form's fields but never their values, and people are identified by a SHA-256 hash of their email. There's also a right-to-be-forgotten API that deletes a person by email, hash or device.
Dashcrab Attribution
Install the pixel this week and compare what your platforms say with what actually happened. You sign in with your existing Dashcrab account.
