What is double counting?

When two or more channels or reports each take credit for the same sale.

Double counting happens when two or more channels or reports each take full credit for the same result. It’s the most common reason your reports add up to more than the business sold.

None of this means anyone did bad work. Each platform credits itself when its ad touched the buyer, and each report passes on what its platform says. When one buyer saw a creator post, a paid social ad and a search ad, three reports can each count the same sale. Read alone, each one looks fine. Added together, the total runs past your own numbers.

Why it matters

A buyer who saw a creator video and then clicked a Meta ad can be counted in both reports. Add them together and you get more sales than you made.

An example

Example (made-up numbers): three channels report 4,200 results for a quarter. Matched against the brand’s own numbers, 1,380 hold up. Of the 2,820 that don’t, 1,610 were counted twice, 740 came from email and 470 came from people already searching the brand’s name.

Where it misleads

Reading each report on its own. Double counting only shows up when you put every report next to your own total for the same dates.

How Arcus handles it

This is the core of every spend report. We match each reported result to your own sales, tickets, sign-ups or streams, count it once, and show which results held up, which were counted twice, and which belonged to another channel.

More in our guide: Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram): how to tell what worked