DATA DISCREPANCY ANALYSIS

When Your Numbers Don't Match, Every Paid Decision Is a Guess

Google Ads and Meta are both claiming the same conversion. Your call leads aren't attributed to any channel. GA4 is showing a number that disagrees with both. You're not dealing with bad data — you're dealing with platforms that were never designed to agree. Ignited Nepal audits every gap across your paid media stack and tells you exactly what's causing each one.

Full reconciliation across Google Ads, Meta, GA4, and call tracking · Duplicate attribution identified and quantified — not just flagged · Call lead attribution built into the reporting framework · Built for Australian businesses running multi-channel paid media
This is for you if

Who This Is For

The Marketing Director Who Can't Get Sign-Off on Budget — You're bringing a budget recommendation to leadership and you have three different ROAS numbers — one from Google Ads, one from Meta, one from GA4. They don't agree. Leadership doesn't know which one to believe. Neither do you. The audit gives you one defensible number with documented methodology behind it, so the budget conversation is based on data, not the most persuasive platform dashboard.

The Paid Media Manager Running Google and Meta Simultaneously — Both channels are reporting positive performance. But when you look at total attributed conversions across both platforms, it exceeds your actual conversion volume. Google and Meta are both claiming credit for the same people. You need to know the true contribution of each channel — not the self-reported version from dashboards that have a financial incentive to show high attribution.

The Business Getting Leads via Phone That Disappear Into a Black Box — In Australia, particularly for trades, healthcare, legal, and home services, a significant portion of qualified leads arrive via phone. Those calls are not in Google Ads. They are not in Meta. They are not in GA4. They exist in a phone log that no attribution system is reading. Your reported CPA is artificially high because the conversions generated by your paid media are not being captured. The audit builds the attribution bridge for call leads.

What's broken

What's Broken

Attribution Window Mismatch

Google Ads uses a 30-day click attribution window by default. Meta's default is 7-day click, 1-day view. GA4 operates on session-based attribution, not click-based. When a user clicks a Google ad on day 1, a Meta ad on day 10, and converts on day 12 — Google claims it (30-day window), Meta claims it (within 7 days), and GA4 attributes it to whichever source triggered the final session. Three platforms, one conversion, three claims.

View-Through Attribution Inflating Meta Numbers

Meta counts conversions from users who saw your ad but never clicked it. In a market like Australia where Meta's retargeting reach is broad and users are frequently re-exposed to brand ads, view-through attribution can account for 40–60% of Meta's reported conversion volume on retargeting campaigns. When you're reporting Meta ROAS, you may be including a large percentage of conversions that would have happened regardless of the ad.

iOS Privacy Signal Loss

Apple's App Tracking Transparency has materially reduced Meta's ability to track iPhone users in Australia — one of the highest iPhone penetration markets in the world. Meta fills these gaps with modelled conversions — statistical estimates based on aggregated data. These modelled conversions appear in your dashboard next to real conversions with no label distinguishing them. The proportion of modelled data in a Meta account can range from 20% to over 50% depending on audience composition.

Call Lead Attribution Gap

Phone calls generated by paid media do not automatically appear in any attribution system. If you're running Google call extensions or a phone number on a landing page, calls are being generated but not connected to a channel, a campaign, or a cost. The result: your reported CPA from paid search is higher than your real CPA, because the conversions coming through the phone are invisible. Call tracking integration is the fix — the audit identifies the gap and scopes the solution.

What we engineer

What We Do

Google Ads vs. GA4

We reconcile Google Ads click and conversion counts against GA4 session and goal completion data. We identify the structural gap caused by attribution model differences and flag any configuration-driven gaps — missing tags, broken conversion actions, mismatched goals — that are adding noise on top of the structural discrepancy.

Meta Ads vs. GA4

We separate Meta-reported conversions into click-through, view-through, and modelled categories. We compare Meta's attributed volume against GA4's paid social session and conversion data for the same period. We quantify how much of Meta's reported performance can be corroborated by a source independent of Meta's own measurement system.

Google Ads vs. Meta Ads (Overlap)

We identify the shared conversion paths — users who were exposed to both Google and Meta ads before converting — and calculate the true unduplicated conversion volume across both platforms. This is the number you should be reporting to leadership, not the sum of two over-attributed platform figures.

GA4 vs. Form Submission Records

We cross-reference GA4 conversion events against your backend form submission data or CRM lead records. Gaps here are typically caused by tracking implementation issues — form submissions firing before the conversion event, thank-you page redirects not completing, or form submits happening in iframes that GA4 isn't measuring.

Ad Platforms vs. Call Tracking Data

We audit your current call attribution setup — or the absence of one — and map the gap between calls generated by paid media and calls currently attributed in any platform. Where call tracking is not in place, we document the scope and implementation path. Where it is in place, we reconcile call conversion data against ad platform reporting.

What changes

What Changes

Before
After
Before A Reconciliation Methodology You Can Reuse
After Every platform pair has a documented reconciliation approach — what to pull, when, and how to calculate the adjusted conversion number. This is a process your team runs monthly, not a one-time correction that degrades the moment you run a new campaign.
Before A Unified Reporting View
After One reporting framework with an authoritative source for each metric. Clicks from ad platforms. Sessions from GA4. Leads from form data and call tracking. Revenue from CRM or sales records. Each number has a documented source and a documented reason for being the right one to use.
Before One Number Everyone Trusts
After The platform data wars — marketing reporting Google's number, finance reporting GA4's number, leadership asking which one is real — end when there is a single agreed conversion number with a methodology behind it. That is what the unified reporting view produces.
Before Decision Confidence on Channel Allocation
After When you know your reconciled CPA by channel — Google Ads, Meta, call-attributed — you can make allocation decisions that are grounded in real performance data. The question "which channel should we scale?" gets a data-backed answer instead of a platform-reported guess.
Common questions

FAQ

Google Ads and Meta are both reporting positive ROAS. Is that actually possible if we're over-attributing?

Yes — platforms report ROAS based on their own attributed conversions, which can exceed actual conversion volume when both platforms are claiming credit for the same users. A business with 100 actual conversions might see Google Ads report 85 conversions and Meta report 75 conversions — a combined 160 across two platforms against 100 actual outcomes. Both platforms are technically correct within their own attribution logic. The combined number is not.

How much of our Meta conversion data is modelled vs. real?

The proportion varies by account, but in Australian accounts with high iOS audience composition, modelled conversions can represent 30–50% of Meta's reported total. Meta does not surface this breakdown in standard reporting. During the audit, we use campaign-level signals and GA4 comparison to estimate the modelled proportion and flag campaigns where the corroborated click-through performance is materially lower than the dashboard headline.

We have call tracking already. Does that mean our attribution is accurate?

Not necessarily. Having a call tracking platform does not automatically mean call conversions are flowing back into Google Ads or Meta as offline conversions. The audit checks whether call data is being imported into ad platforms, whether it's being matched to the correct campaigns, and whether the attribution windows on call conversions match the windows on other conversion types. Disconnected call tracking is common even in accounts that believe the data is in order.

How long does this audit take?

Three weeks from data access to handover. Week one is access and inventory. Week two is gap analysis and root cause. Week three is framework delivery and team walk-through. If access to any platform is delayed, the timeline shifts accordingly.

What happens to our reporting after the audit?

You receive a unified reporting framework that specifies which source to use for each metric, the reconciliation adjustments to apply, and a monthly process for maintaining accuracy. The framework is designed to be run by your internal team without ongoing engagement with us — though some clients choose to have us run the monthly reconciliation. Either way, the methodology is yours.

Our team

The people behind the work

Not a black box. Real specialists you can call, with their names on the work.

Niraj Raut

Niraj Raut

Founder — Ecommerce SEO
Keshab Joshi

Keshab Joshi

PPC Expert
Hawrry Bhattarai

Hawrry Bhattarai

Google Ads Expert
Arogya Rijal

Arogya Rijal

SaaS SEO Expert
Start here

The Platforms Won't Agree on Their Own. The Reconciliation Has to Happen on Your End.

Google and Meta will keep claiming the same conversions. Call leads will keep disappearing from attribution. The gap between your reported ROAS and your actual return will keep compounding. The audit maps every discrepancy, confirms every root cause, and gives your team one reporting framework to work from.

We work with Australian businesses running Google Ads, Meta, or both — and we specifically audit call attribution gaps that most paid media reviews miss entirely.