Meta and Google both claiming the same sale — 380% of actual revenue

The situation

A premium bridal jewellery brand in Mumbai selling gold and diamond jewellery at ₹50,000-₹500,000 per piece was running Meta and Google simultaneously. Their combined attributed revenue from both platforms was ₹4.2 crore per month. Their Shopify revenue was ₹1.1 crore. The founder was preparing investor materials and needed accurate numbers.

The problem

Meta had both a browser pixel and a CAPI implementation — with no event_id deduplication. Google had three active conversion actions including two legacy ones from previous agencies. Every purchase was being counted twice by Meta (pixel + CAPI) and up to three times by Google (three overlapping conversion actions). On high-ticket jewellery with long consideration cycles (customers visit the site multiple times over weeks), multiple attribution windows were each claiming 100% credit. Combined inflation: 380%.

What we did

1. Audited Meta Events Manager — purchase count 2.1x Shopify. Audited Google Ads — 3 active primary conversion actions all counting the same purchase
2. Added event_id to Meta pixel and CAPI using Shopify order ID — deduplication confirmed within 48 hours
3. Deactivated 2 legacy Google conversion actions — kept only server-side purchase import from Shopify webhook as sole primary signal
4. Built GTM Server-Side container routing all events — Meta CAPI, Google Analytics 4, and Google Ads conversion — from single server endpoint with consistent data
5. Built Looker Studio report using Shopify as revenue ground truth — each platform shown as percentage of verified Shopify revenue

Why it worked

Bridal jewellery has a particularly high attribution inflation risk because the consideration cycle is long (weeks to months), customers visit the site many times, and AOVs are high enough that even a single double-counted sale significantly inflates reported revenue. The combination of Meta pixel + CAPI without dedup AND multiple Google conversion actions is unfortunately common in accounts that have been touched by multiple agencies. A unified server-side stack eliminates both problems simultaneously.