Why do Google Analytics numbers not match ADS and Facebook ADS numbers?
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2025 3:51 am
One of the great advantages of digital marketing is its ability to be measurable. In other words, you can clearly evaluate all your actions, campaigns and investments and check whether or not they were effective. Therefore, it is important to know what each media tool takes into account when presenting results and how each one presents these results.
How Google Analytics measures data
Google Analytics is an online data analysis tool from Google that, by installing a code on website pages, collects information from users and transforms it into reports.
The purchase journey is the path a potential customer takes before making a purchase. When a person guatemala mobile database decides to buy a product, they can click on a link on Facebook, visit your website directly, or view an ad on Google Ads. In other words, even though several media are part of this process, Google Analytics only shows the last media that led to the conversion, giving it all the credits.
In the case below we can clearly see this:
Conversions made through direct messages were from people who found out about the product through Google and only later made the purchase. In other words, by looking only at the last point of the conversion, we could reduce investments in Google Ads, which would cause the performance of Direct messages to drop.
How Google Ads measures data
In addition to measuring data based on the last click, as in Google Analytics, Google Ads also allows this analysis to be done based on the first click, position-based, time decay, linear or data.
Measure Results from Google Analytics, Google ADS and Facebook ADS
When a person makes a purchase or takes another important action on your website, the steps that lead the customer to reach that stage involve carrying out several searches and clicking on certain ads. To understand how data analysis is performed by Google Ads, it is necessary to understand a few concepts:
Data-driven: assigns credits based on how people searched for your e-commerce site and decided to become customers. Google identifies patterns between clicks that led to conversion, calculating the real contribution that each step had up until the moment of conversion. In other words, Google assigns more credits to clicks considered more valuable for your strategy, providing more complete information about the ads.
Last click: Attributing all conversion credits to the last-clicked ad, while providing a demo that helps identify what generated the conversion.
First click: works as a way to discover what interactions the customer had that led them to your website.
Linear: here, credits for conversion are distributed equally across all stages of your strategy, i.e. all stages are assessed as having the same relevance for conversion.
Time reduction: clicks receive credits proportional to the time before the conversion. In other words, clicks that occurred closer to the time of conversion will receive more credits, and clicks that occurred further away from the time of conversion will receive fewer credits.
Position-based: In this case, the first and last clicks are considered more relevant to the action, and are given a higher percentage of consideration than intermediate clicks.
How Facebook Ads measures data
Unlike Google Ads and Google Analytics, Facebook uses other approaches to analyze results.
For Facebook, conversions are counted taking into account whether or not the tool mediated the conversion. When a person sees an ad on Facebook, Instagram or Audience Network, they can perform several actions, such as clicking on the ad, going to a website, making a purchase or simply viewing it.
Some actions that occur outside of your ad, such as a purchase on your website, are attributed to your ad by Facebook if they occurred within a certain number of days after someone viewed or clicked on your ad. By default, these actions will be reported if they occurred within one day after someone viewed your ad or 28 days after someone clicked on your ad.
How to Measure Results from Google Analytics, Google ADS and Facebook ADS
What we call the Attribution Window is nothing more than the number of days between the moment a person viewed or clicked on the ad and the moment they perform the action.
Click attribution: A person clicked on your ad and took an action.
View-through attribution: A person saw your ad, didn't click on it, but took an action within the attribution window period.
These attribution windows can be selected based on your objective. For Facebook Ads, it’s important to set a window that’s long enough to account for important touchpoints in relation to the beginning of conversion paths, especially if your business requires a long purchase consideration cycle.
For example, the consideration cycle for purchasing a car is typically longer than the consideration cycle for purchasing a video game, since, to buy a car, the consumer needs to make a larger investment, in addition to carrying out more research before making the purchase.
Which report should I analyze?
If you are a company manager, simply checking Google Analytics data is enough to know how much return your investments are getting. However, if you work in the media, the ideal is to analyze the situation as a whole. By doing this, you will understand the path your customer takes until the moment of conversion, and you will be able to outline new goals and strategies to increase your return on investment.
To evaluate the sales funnel, it is necessary to understand it as if it were an Olympic race, in which the athlete passes the baton to the other, overcoming obstacles and achieving a joint performance, to achieve the best result and reach the finish line. Therefore, to contextualize the composition of your E-Commerce revenue, it is necessary to better understand how the media platforms used take into account the factors of measuring results.
How Google Analytics measures data
Google Analytics is an online data analysis tool from Google that, by installing a code on website pages, collects information from users and transforms it into reports.
The purchase journey is the path a potential customer takes before making a purchase. When a person guatemala mobile database decides to buy a product, they can click on a link on Facebook, visit your website directly, or view an ad on Google Ads. In other words, even though several media are part of this process, Google Analytics only shows the last media that led to the conversion, giving it all the credits.
In the case below we can clearly see this:
Conversions made through direct messages were from people who found out about the product through Google and only later made the purchase. In other words, by looking only at the last point of the conversion, we could reduce investments in Google Ads, which would cause the performance of Direct messages to drop.
How Google Ads measures data
In addition to measuring data based on the last click, as in Google Analytics, Google Ads also allows this analysis to be done based on the first click, position-based, time decay, linear or data.
Measure Results from Google Analytics, Google ADS and Facebook ADS
When a person makes a purchase or takes another important action on your website, the steps that lead the customer to reach that stage involve carrying out several searches and clicking on certain ads. To understand how data analysis is performed by Google Ads, it is necessary to understand a few concepts:
Data-driven: assigns credits based on how people searched for your e-commerce site and decided to become customers. Google identifies patterns between clicks that led to conversion, calculating the real contribution that each step had up until the moment of conversion. In other words, Google assigns more credits to clicks considered more valuable for your strategy, providing more complete information about the ads.
Last click: Attributing all conversion credits to the last-clicked ad, while providing a demo that helps identify what generated the conversion.
First click: works as a way to discover what interactions the customer had that led them to your website.
Linear: here, credits for conversion are distributed equally across all stages of your strategy, i.e. all stages are assessed as having the same relevance for conversion.
Time reduction: clicks receive credits proportional to the time before the conversion. In other words, clicks that occurred closer to the time of conversion will receive more credits, and clicks that occurred further away from the time of conversion will receive fewer credits.
Position-based: In this case, the first and last clicks are considered more relevant to the action, and are given a higher percentage of consideration than intermediate clicks.
How Facebook Ads measures data
Unlike Google Ads and Google Analytics, Facebook uses other approaches to analyze results.
For Facebook, conversions are counted taking into account whether or not the tool mediated the conversion. When a person sees an ad on Facebook, Instagram or Audience Network, they can perform several actions, such as clicking on the ad, going to a website, making a purchase or simply viewing it.
Some actions that occur outside of your ad, such as a purchase on your website, are attributed to your ad by Facebook if they occurred within a certain number of days after someone viewed or clicked on your ad. By default, these actions will be reported if they occurred within one day after someone viewed your ad or 28 days after someone clicked on your ad.
How to Measure Results from Google Analytics, Google ADS and Facebook ADS
What we call the Attribution Window is nothing more than the number of days between the moment a person viewed or clicked on the ad and the moment they perform the action.
Click attribution: A person clicked on your ad and took an action.
View-through attribution: A person saw your ad, didn't click on it, but took an action within the attribution window period.
These attribution windows can be selected based on your objective. For Facebook Ads, it’s important to set a window that’s long enough to account for important touchpoints in relation to the beginning of conversion paths, especially if your business requires a long purchase consideration cycle.
For example, the consideration cycle for purchasing a car is typically longer than the consideration cycle for purchasing a video game, since, to buy a car, the consumer needs to make a larger investment, in addition to carrying out more research before making the purchase.
Which report should I analyze?
If you are a company manager, simply checking Google Analytics data is enough to know how much return your investments are getting. However, if you work in the media, the ideal is to analyze the situation as a whole. By doing this, you will understand the path your customer takes until the moment of conversion, and you will be able to outline new goals and strategies to increase your return on investment.
To evaluate the sales funnel, it is necessary to understand it as if it were an Olympic race, in which the athlete passes the baton to the other, overcoming obstacles and achieving a joint performance, to achieve the best result and reach the finish line. Therefore, to contextualize the composition of your E-Commerce revenue, it is necessary to better understand how the media platforms used take into account the factors of measuring results.