How this audit was measured, which source answers which question, and the plain-language meaning of every attribution term used in these pages.
| Term | What it means | When we use it |
|---|---|---|
| Last click | The whole order is credited to the last ad the customer clicked before buying. | Default for campaign tables — it matches how day-to-day campaign decisions are made. |
| Linear (multi-touch) | The order's value is split evenly across every ad touch in the customer's journey. Example: a $90 order that touched an AppLovin ad, a Google search ad and an email gets $30 credited to each. | To see which channels participate in journeys even when they don't close them. A channel whose linear number is much higher than its last-click number is a journey starter. |
| Deduplicated channel view | Each order counted once across all channels (credit shared when several channels touched it). Channel numbers add up to total revenue. | Channel mix and budget allocation (Summary page). Google = $323.5K / ROAS 2.05 in the 14-day window on this view. |
| Platform-comparable view | Google gets full credit for every order where it had the last platform click — the same rule Google's own tag uses. Numbers from different channels must NOT be added up in this view. | Only for the tracking audit: comparing what Google's tag reports ($259K) against what Triple Whale says Google actually drove ($611K) → the 42% capture finding. |
"How much credit does Google deserve in the mix?" (deduplicated: $323.5K) and "is Google's conversion tag seeing everything it should?" (platform-comparable: $611K vs $259K reported) are different questions. Each table in this report states which view it uses.
14-day window (May 28 – Jun 10), chosen to end 2+ days before the pull so late-arriving conversions don't skew the comparison. Both sides aligned to order date (Triple Whale's convention; Google's "conversions by conversion date" metric). Purchase conversions only. Joined campaign-by-campaign using the campaign IDs Triple Whale records on each order's ad touches. Result: Google's tag reported $259,380 of conversion value; Triple Whale credited Google-last-click orders $611,467 → 42% capture, worst on brand search (13%). Most likely causes: the click ID getting lost across the funnel's domain hops (advertorial → store → external checkout) and conservative data-driven attribution. The repair plan and its success metric live on the Search page.
Triple Whale's subscription metrics read from its Recharge integration, which shows only 2 active subscriptions — clearly not the real recurring base for a store where 52% of orders come from returning customers. Recurring billing runs through the external checkout, invisible to Triple Whale as "subscriptions". Fix: action 6 on the Action Plan.
Triple Whale's blended totals are ground truth (real orders); the per-channel split depends on its pixel and attribution rules — the best available view, but a model. Product-level revenue exists only platform-side (used for relative comparisons only, labeled where shown).
AppLovin spend moving with brand searches (r = 0.68) is strong evidence, not proof. That's exactly why the YouTube proposal pre-registers a lift measurement instead of assuming the effect.
All field research dated June 11, 2026. Meta Ad Library per-brand ad counts were not reliably retrievable and are not quoted. Anything unverifiable is labeled UNVERIFIED or excluded.