Perfogro study finds attribution windows can inflate ad results by up to 180%

A 21-month study from Perfogro Ltd across more than 200 advertiser accounts found that standard attribution windows can distort conversion reporting, sometimes by 180%, and steer budgets toward the wrong channels. The company says the mismatch between platform dashboards and CRM data led to an estimated £8 million in misdirected spend across the dataset.

Why it matters: - Attribution settings can change which campaigns get credit for conversions, which then changes how advertisers allocate budget. - Perfogro Ltd says that distortion can push spend toward channels that look stronger in platform dashboards than they are in verified CRM data. - The study estimates more than £4,000 in wasted spend per account per quarter on average.

What happened: - Perfogro Ltd analyzed 21 months of data from more than 200 advertiser accounts. - The dataset covered more than 1.4 billion ad views and 4.1 million conversions recorded between July 2024 and March 2026. - The research compared platform-reported performance with verified CRM figures across paid search, paid social, programmatic display, native ads and performance partnership activity. - Perfogro’s analytics team said it had observed the reporting gap across all accounts since Q3 2024.

The details: - No standard attribution window setting matched verified CRM conversion results with an error margin below 11% across the full dataset. - When 1-day view-through attribution was turned off and results were rechecked against CRM data, 67% of view-attributed conversions showed no statistically meaningful exposure correlation. - For connected TV placements, reported ROAS inflation ranged from 31% to 180%, with a dataset average of 67%. - Perfogro said the CTV gap reflects high impression volumes, near-zero click rates and default view-through credit settings on most platforms. - In standard performance audits, 87.0% of accounts used different attribution window settings across active platforms. - In accounts running both paid search and paid social, double-counted conversions made up an average of 18.3% of total reported conversions. - After cross-channel normalization, blended ROAS fell by an average of 21.6% versus unadjusted platform reporting. - In 61% of accounts, the channel with the highest budget at onboarding was also the channel with the most favorable default attribution window, not the strongest verified performer. - After window normalization and CRM reconciliation, 43% of accounts had at least one channel overallocated by more than 30% versus verified contribution. - Estimated wasted spend tied to attribution-driven misallocation averaged more than £4,000 per account per quarter. - Mid-tier spend accounts showed the highest absolute misallocation. - Over the full study period, Perfogro estimated about £8 million in misdirected spend across the dataset. - All data was aggregated and anonymized, and no individual advertiser accounts or client identities were identifiable.

Between the lines: - The findings suggest platform dashboards can reward settings that capture more credit, even when those settings do not reflect real downstream performance. - Perfogro’s research points to a second-order problem: familiarity with platform reporting can deepen misallocation if advertisers do not check how each platform assigns credit. - The study’s biggest warning is not just measurement error. It is that measurement error can reshape budget decisions at scale.

What's next: - Advertisers are likely to face more pressure to reconcile platform data with CRM data before reallocating spend. - Performance teams may need to review attribution windows across channels more often instead of relying on default settings. - Perfogro’s findings add momentum to calls for more transparent and comparable cross-platform reporting.