Every platform, whether it be LinkedIn, Google, Meta, is going to tell you that they drove the lead that got the deal done. And they aren't wrong about that.
This is the problem.
Let's talk about view-through. A prospect saw your ad on one of the channels. They didn't click on it, but down the road, they converted. The platforms, of course, are going to want to take credit. And technically, that is accurate. They should get the credit.
The structural problem is that LinkedIn can't see Google's data. Google can't see Meta's. No platform has visibility into the full buyer journey, so each one reports from its own island. It will be a marketers dream come true when this actually happens.
In B2B, this gets even worse. A large enterprise deal could have 10, 15, 20+ people involved and influencing a decision over the course of a 6+ month sales cycle. This math just becomes tough to make the attribution math start mathing.
What I've seen in my career as both CEO and CRO is that chasing precision here is a trap. These platforms aren't broken. They are working exactly as they are intended and they are optimizing for their own story. Your job is to build the cross-channel view that they can't give you themselves.
Of course, directional beats precise, but wrong. The goal is a defensible decision, not a perfect 'who gets the credit' assignment.
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