How do you build a reliable “Holistic View” across Meta, Google & Organic? (Shopify)

[MySEMStrategist]

There is no single “perfect” source of truth. The key is deciding what each tool is allowed to be right about.

Meta & Google Ads are optimization tools, BUT not neutral reporting. Meta especially will overclaim due to view through attribution. We use platform data to judge campaign performance inside that platform, not total revenue credit.

Shopify is the revenue anchor. Nothing should ever exceed Shopify totals. That’s your north star.

GA4 can be used for directional channel allocation and trends. It will undercount paid social, but it’s consistent and channel agnostic.

Look into investing in third party attribution tools if it becomes a make or break situation with the client in terms of trust. Companies like North Beam or Triple Whale are good options to start.

[AccomplishedTart9015]

If by holistic view u mean one place to answer what drove revenue + what should we do next, I’ve had the cleanest results with a simple triangulation setup: pick 1 North Star (blended MER / CAC / profit), make Shopify/CRM the source of truth for revenue + refunds, then stitch spend + clicks + UTMs from each platform into a single daily table (channel, campaign, spend, sessions, orders, revenue, new/returning).

Use GA4 mainly for directional pathing + landing page diagnostics, not as ur book of record. For attribution, don’t chase perfect: run 2–3 consistent lenses side by side (platform 7d click, GA4 last non-direct, + a cheap how did u hear about us post-purchase survey) and only make decisions when all 3 point the same way.

The biggest unlock is agreeing upfront what decisions this dashboard should drive (cut/hold/scale, budget shifts, creative rotation) so u’re not building a nice to know reporting museum.

[fathom53]

Well Google is more likely to be more accurate than Meta’s ad manager. Meta will let you set an attribution windows, so making it something like 7 days vs 28 days is a good place to start. You can also set it to look at clicks and not clicks & views as well. Not just going with the default attribution is the best way forward.

You can also look at what numbers show up in GA4 and use that as your source of truth. We have had clients comes to us because Meta was reporting revenue numbers that made no sense. A few clients turned off Meta based on our recommendation to see what would happen, revenue barely dropped for those brands. Meta was not driving as much business as anyone said.

Beyond using Meta’s ad manager, our agency will use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data to look at what ads are driving revenue by looking at which Meta ads have purchases in GA4. Keep in mind that GA4 won’t capture every purchase for paid social ad platforms but will capture some, so it’s a good 2nd star. Your results are somewhere between what Meta says and what GA4 says. Just a question of how much over reporting is Meta doing.

If they are spending $20K+ per month on Meta and it is working, then you should see tons of ads with attributed purchases in GA4. Those are the ads I would spend more money on. You need a well named campaign, ad set and ad structure to make this work and using dynamic UTM parameters are standard these days for running Meta really well. Then based on that data we can do the following for clients:

* Top Ads Report: build a report showing the best ads from the last year and all time
* Ad Creative Report: Send a weekly report on what is doing the best and why we think it is doing well.
* Creative Inspiration: Between our DTC Brand Index and seeing what works across 15+ other ecom brands, we always send over new ad creative ideas for clients to test

In the end, building a source of truth is about knowing how to use the tools and what the pros and cons of each tool are.

[ppcwithyrv]

Those tools don’t actually figure out where a sale truly came from.
They just organize and display the data you already have.

99% of the market is cake decorating with fancy shining objects (AI, proprietary tech, etc…). Unless your spending $300K per month, $10K+ per day you should be fine with a reporting excel sheet.

John Moran talks about this, there is no true attribution tool for all platforms—maybe sales force at tremendous amounts of spend.

Everyone says Triple Whale, Analyzify, Northbeam but those are nothing but dashboards, Power My Analytics with more functioning and faux optimizations so the platforms do better…..Your best bet is MER-approach with solid platform results. GA4, UTMs, excel reporting + Shopify comparisons and optimizing by platform with a holistic MER is your best bet here.

Serious players and larger agencies in the space don’t use Triple Whale, Analyzify or North Beam. The idea of “perfect attribution” below enterprise spend is mostly a myth.

[Available_Cup5454]

Use GA4 as the single source of truth and evaluate channels on blended MER and revenue lift rather than platform reported roas

[PPC_Chief]

I was surprised to learn at the last Brighton SEO I attended that even big corporates spending millions struggle with the same problem.