TL;DR Every ad platform is structurally set up to over-report conversions — Meta, Google, and LinkedIn all take credit for the same customer using overlapping attribution windows. The remedy is a four-level trust stack: prioritize CRM closed-won data, then server-side event data, then GA4, and treat platform dashboards as the least reliable. Run a weekly reconciliation (sum of platform conversions vs. CRM actuals), enforce a consistent UTM taxonomy across every campaign, and report CRM-verified CPA and pipeline in a single dashboard that no ad platform owns. “Good enough” attribution means UTM coverage above 90%, CRM source fields populated on 95%+ of closed-won deals, and platform data used strictly for optimization — never to justify spend. Google Ads says 47 conversions. Meta says 52. LinkedIn says 31. Your CRM shows 38 closed customers. Someone is lying — and it isn’t your CRM. If you’ve ever merged platform reports into one spreadsheet and watched the totals blow past anything plausible, you already know what’s happening. The combined conversions that platforms claim often overshoot your real customer count by 50%, sometimes 100% or more. You’re not making a math error. You’re watching every ad platform grade its own homework. And when they grade their own homework, everyone gets an A+. The inflation isn’t from a bad pixel or sloppy UTM setup. It’s baked in — a direct result of the incentives of ad platforms that both sell you impressions and score their own performance. Databox research on attribution found that one in four GTM leaders said at least 25% of last quarter’s pipeline was misattributed due…