Our Salesforce pipeline revenue never matches what our ad platforms report as ROAS — is that a tracking problem?
The gap between ad platform ROAS and Salesforce-confirmed revenue is structural, not a tracking error. Ad platforms count conversions at the top of the funnel — lead form submissions, demo requests, free trial signups. Salesforce counts revenue at the bottom — closed deals, processed payments. For businesses with sales cycles longer than 30 days, the ad platform has already attributed the conversion and reported the ROAS before the lead has moved through a single pipeline stage. The reconciliation bridges this by mapping platform conversion events to CRM pipeline outcomes and producing a channel-level cost-per-close, not cost-per-lead.
We're using Northbeam/Triple Whale. Does that mean our attribution is already fixed?
Third-party MTA tools improve on last-click attribution but introduce their own assumptions — about how to weight upper-funnel touchpoints, how long the attribution window should extend, and how to handle iOS signal gaps. These assumptions are configurable, and the defaults are not always right for your specific sales cycle or customer journey. The audit reviews your MTA model configuration, compares its channel rankings against native platform data and CRM-confirmed outcomes, and identifies where the model is systematically over- or under-attributing specific channels.
How do we reconcile ad platform data with Salesforce when there's a long sales cycle?
The reconciliation uses a cohorted approach — matching ad platform conversion events from a given period against CRM records created in that same period, then tracking those records forward through pipeline stages over the following weeks or months. This produces a conversion rate at each pipeline stage by channel. For a 90-day sales cycle, the full reconciliation requires 90 days of downstream CRM data to close. For the initial audit, we use historical data to produce a statistically valid estimate that can be refined as more pipeline data accumulates.
What if our MTA tool and native platform data disagree on which channel is our top performer?
Disagreement between MTA and native platform reporting is expected and normal — the disagreement is the output of different attribution models, not an error in either system. The audit documents the disagreement, explains the model assumption driving it, and recommends which view to use for which specific decision. Budget allocation decisions for upper-funnel spend are better made from MTA data. Bid optimisation decisions within a platform are better made from that platform's native conversion data. The two views serve different purposes.
How do you handle multi-touch attribution for deals that close offline or through a sales team?
Offline and sales-team-closed deals are the most common source of the Salesforce-to-platform gap. The reconciliation handles them through offline conversion import — mapping closed CRM opportunities back to the original ad click using your lead's email or phone as the match key, and importing that data into Google Ads and Meta as an offline conversion event. This shifts the platform's optimization signal from top-of-funnel form fills to bottom-of-funnel closes, and it produces a platform-reported ROAS that reflects actual revenue — not just lead generation.
