Google Says One Thing, Meta Says Another… Who’s Right? (Jeff Greenfield Explains)

Inside Marketing with MarketSurge welcomes Jeff Greenfield — a 3x founder, analytics pioneer, and CEO/co-founder of Prova (getprova.com). If you’ve ever wondered why your marketing data says one thing while your financials scream something else, this episode is your intervention.

Jeff has been fixing attribution chaos for decades — building companies that pioneered multi-touch attribution, created viewability standards, and cracked privacy-safe measurement long before the industry caught up.

Today, he's on a mission to solve the biggest existential crisis in marketing:

👉 There is no single source of truth — and it's costing brands millions.

We unpack:

Why Google, Meta, Amazon, Hulu all claim credit for the same sale

What probabilistic, AI-powered attribution actually looks like

How consumer behavior has shifted into apps + marketplaces

Why the future of search may live inside ChatGPT

What marketers MUST do now to keep up with the next data revolution

👉 Learn more about Prova: https://getprova.com

👉 Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffgreenfield/

📌 Episode Highlights

00:00 — Why marketing data rarely matches financial reality
04:32 — The “six vendors, one sale” problem
09:10 — Multi-touch attribution explained in simple language
13:55 — Why GA4, Meta, and Google all disagree
17:40 — How Prova uses AI without relying on LLMs
25:10 — Walled gardens, clean rooms, and the new fragmented internet
34:20 — The rise of ChatGPT-based shopping
40:00 — How marketers should prepare for the next 3–5 years
45:55 — Where to find Jeff + free attribution certification

🚀 STAY CONNECTED WITH MARKETSURGE

🌐 Website: https://marketsurge.io

🎙️ Podcast: https://marketsurge.transistor.fm/

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@marketsurge-q7q

📘 Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100035121171654

👥 Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/15wpKr1WmN/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsurgeio

🐦 Twitter (X): https://x.com/marketsurging

📅 Book Your Value or Free Coffee Call:
https://link.marketsurge.io/widget/bookings/marketsurge/demozvwcxw

Creators and Guests

Host

Reed Hansen

Reed Hansen is a seasoned digital marketing executive with a proven track record of driving business growth through innovative strategies. As the Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge, he focuses on leveraging AI-powered marketing tools to help businesses scale efficiently. Reed's expertise spans from leading startups to Fortune 500 companies, making him a recognized authority in the digital marketing space. His unique ability to combine data-driven insights with creative solutions has been instrumental in achieving remarkable sales growth for his clients. ​

What is Inside Marketing with MarketSurge?

Welcome to Inside Marketing with MarketSurge — your front-row seat to the boldest business insights, marketing breakthroughs, and entrepreneurial real talk.

Hosted by Reed Hansen, Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge and a digital marketing veteran who's helped scale everything from scrappy startups to Fortune 500 giants, this podcast dives deep into what’s really moving the needle in today’s marketing world. Find us at Marketsurge.io

Each week, we’ll break down the latest marketing and business news (minus the fluff), explore tech trends you actually need to know, and feature unfiltered conversations with the most interesting minds in entrepreneurship and marketing.

Whether you're a founder, a marketer, or just a curious hustler looking to level up, this is where growth happens—loudly, smartly, and with just the right amount of sass.

Subscribe, tune in, and let’s scale something legendary. 🚀

Speaker: Welcome to Inside
Marketing With Market Surge.

Your front row seat to the
boldest ideas and smartest

strategies in the marketing game.

Your host is Reed Hansen, chief
Growth Officer at Market Surge.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
Hello, and welcome to Inside

Marketing with Market Surge.

Today on the show, we're unpacking one of
the biggest headaches in business today.

Why marketing data rarely
matches financial reality.

And to help us make sense of it, we've
got the perfect guest, Jeff Greenfield,

CEO, and co-founder of Protic.

Jeff's a three time entrepreneur with
more than 30 years of experience in

marketing, analytics, and strategy.

He's built companies that pioneered
multi-touch attribution, viewability

standards, and cookie list tracking.

Long before the rest
of the industry cut on.

Now he's leading Lytics, an AI driven
privacy first attribution platform

that tackles the pro problem every
CFO and CMO is facing right now.

That there is no single
source of truth in marketing.

Jeff is here to bridge that gap.

Help us understand and show us how
finance and marketing can really

start speaking the same language.

Thanks for joining us, Jeff.

Jeff Greenfield: It's a
pleasure to be here, Reid.

Thanks for having me.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: So Jeff, you've
been in marketing and analytics marketing

measurement, particularly for decades.

What drew you into this particular
problem around marketing Attribution?

Jeff Greenfield: Well, it was,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: i,

Jeff Greenfield: I, it's a problem
that I faced kind of head on myself.

So if I go back to the early two
thousands, a client I had had

brought me in and asked me to kind
of take over media buying for them.

This was a

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: traded weight loss
company, and right away the team

that I brought in identified some
major issues that was going on.

The biggest was this, what
we call over counting issue.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: you know, for every
sale that they had, there was five or

six different vendors or partners or
publishers who were claiming credit.

And that's, that's not uncommon.

But the problem that this
company faced is that all of the

deals that they had were on a.

A CPA basis.

So

Out a commission.

So for every new customer they were paying
out the equivalent of six commissions.

So

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: oh.

Jeff Greenfield: big problem that
needed to be fixed kind of right away.

So what I did at the time is I was
working on some other technology products.

So I had a team, took one of my
engineers off of there and had them start

figuring out how to solve this problem.

And within a couple weeks we had a.

A rudimentary solution.

But you know, what ends up happening
is, is that once you solve one thing,

it's like a game of whack-a-mole.

Then my team came to me and
said, oh, well what about this?

What about that?

you know it, we had built out
this solution that solved.

Many of the problems that they had,
we were, you know, able to get it

down to just one, winning the sale
eventually, and, and then also figure

out, you know, what was really working
at kind of the top part of the funnel,

what was driving that awareness.

And I had no idea, this was like 2007,
2008, that other people had these issues.

But what we had actually built
out was one of the first.

Multi-touch attribution companies and
that's kind of what got me into it.

But, but you do bring up a good question
because as most business owners know,

you know, it's pretty fun sometimes to
come up with like an ad or a campaign.

It's kind of sexy, you know,
'cause you think you're like living

in like the mad men type world.

But we all know when it comes
down time to do the books.

We all hate numbers, numbers, numbers,
you know, even when things are good,

just figuring out the books is not fun.

Analytics is numbered and it is
definitely, on the surface, does not

seem very exciting or sexy, but I've
been in it now for so long and dealing

with the type of customers we deal with.

We deal with some of the largest
companies in the US and in the world.

We get to be on the inside track of
what they're planning, what they're

doing, and we can see what's actually
working and what's not working

and it's, that's kind of sexy.

especially when they come to
us and they ask us for advice.

That's really cool to have some of
the best marketers in the world say,

Hey, what do you think about this?

And what are you seeing
on your side of things?

So I, that's kind of what got me into it.

And, and I've kind of stayed
here because it's, it's fun.

It's, it's a lot of fun.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Okay.

So you brought up a, a a point that
I think is really interesting and

maybe people not immersed in, in
data may not totally grasp, but, uh,

you know, multi-touch attribution.

You know, you've said that, um.

Or, you know, protic is kind of
built around the idea that marketing

has no single source of truth.

And, and, and, you know, and then also
the idea of multi-touch attribution.

Could you break those concepts
down for our audience that you

know, may, may not be totally
familiar with, with what those mean?

Jeff Greenfield: Yeah, and, and I think
the best way to do it is I'll, I'll

give an example of like a product, like
let's say read that you're a gardener.

You created this amazing news Garden hose.

It, it's,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: incredible.

It doesn't leak and your friends love it.

So you put up a Shopify page
you start running ads on meta.

So that would be Facebook and
Instagram with a really cool video

showing how well it works compared
to others, and has a cool name.

We'll call it the read hose.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Jeff Greenfield: you run ads on
Google, so when someone types in

the re hose, it'll come right up.

so what happens is someone's scrolling
through their Facebook feed and

they see this ad, they pause for a
second, but they don't click on it.

And then they just keep scrolling.

And then a week later they're on
Instagram and they're scrolling along.

They see the same video,
and now they watch it.

They watch the whole thing.

It's like 60 seconds long, and they're
like, this reed hose is pretty cool.

You know, when my hose, you know,
stops working and starts leaking,

I'm, I'm gonna get this reed hose.

But they don't do anything.

They just, they just
say that to themselves.

We've all done that.

then three weeks later.

They're out gardening and they
turn on the hose and the thing

leaks and they're like, oh my God.

Should have gotten that re hose.

And they take their phone out and
they type in Reed hose into Google.

They see it, they click
on your ad and they buy.

Now we know that it was that first ad
on Facebook that caught their attention.

was that ad that they engaged
with on Instagram that made them

make the decision to buy, and
then they bought through Google.

So there's this kind of multi-step, if
you will, process part of that kind of

multi-touch part that we talked about.

when you look in your Google Analytics
four to see the source of the sale, it

will tell you that the source was Google.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: And so multiply that.

Let's say your hose takes off and you
have a thousand sales in the month.

At the end of the month, you're
gonna see and you're gonna look

at it and you're gonna say, wow,
my investment in meta Facebook and

Instagram was completely wasted.

Google's driving all these sales,
I'm gonna cut my spend and I'm

gonna put it all into Google now.

Since it took a while for the person to
go from Facebook to Instagram to then

search, it was like maybe a month and
a half in that example that we gave you

will not see sales go down right away.

It'll take a while.

So let me kind of unpack all of that
story that you now have in your mind.

Because we, we talked about
kind of what attribution is.

Well, there's GA four attribution,
which would tell you spend all your

money on Google, but, and if you look
at Facebook, Facebook will tell you

that they're driving most of the sales.

But who do you believe?

Do you believe Facebook or Google?

Now you have two sources of truth,
two different views of thing, and

the problem is, is that Facebook
doesn't have all your sales.

It only has the ones that it
feels like it was responsible for.

Multi-touch attribution had the ability
early on to be able to go in and tell you

exactly what was going on, that Facebook
drove those sales, so did Instagram.

in order to do that, it had to get all
of this personal identifiable information

via pixels and tags and things like
that, which are no longer out there.

Those are no longer available.

Doesn't give up that information.

So with Protic, we do it by looking
at the engagement level on a daily

basis, but that is not at a user
level, but it's at a daily level.

So we're actually able to tell you
the same information we were able to

do with multi-touch attribution, but
we do it in a privacy safe manner.

But let's,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: let's just take
that picture where you're advertising

on Facebook, Instagram, and Google.

Okay, and let's expand it
and let's add in Criteo.

Let's add in Hulu,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: add in
some other connected tv.

So we've added in three other sources.

So now.

You have five different sources of
truth, and let's say you have an

agency that's buying some of this
stuff for you, they probably have an

opinion too, so that's six or seven.

of these numbers match what finance
has, and that's the big problem.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Jeff Greenfield: solve it at Protic is
that we bring it all together to create a

single view of what's actually going on.

To give you this single source of
truth, that's what's missing for most

marketing organizations these days.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: so
you've raised a lot of questions

that marketers deal with.

Now is your, is your platform I, is it
ingesting the data and synthesizing this?

Or is this more of a service,
human based solution that you

know, you know that you're doing
this as a service, for instance?

Jeff Greenfield: Yeah,
great, great question Reed.

So it, it automatically does
ingest the data if the data.

Is available for some of our larger
clients that data's behind firewalls,

and we will deal with their, you know,
technology team in order to get it.

And then the platform does
automagically, if you will, take that

data, ingest it, and then do all of
the calculations to output the data.

We do have a human layer that
does a QA check still on top

of all the AI that's available.

We still believe in human qa.

There is a layer that we provide
in terms of service to help

with the understanding of it.

For a lot of larger organizations, this.

This moving towards a single source
of truth is a difficult task because

within organizations, measurement is the
whole basis for promotions, salaries,

size of teams, and so bringing in
new measurement is like changing your

religion and it can be a very delicate.

Process.

And so we help guide our
clients through that process.

For, for someone who is not large,
this is pretty straightforward.

It's like, oh my God, I
finally have the right answers.

You know, I'm the decision maker.

This is so simple.

But for organizations that are hundreds,
if not thousands or tens of thousands,

you would, you know, you could understand.

How the numbers are tied into almost
every part of the organization.

So you have to be very careful, even
though this data and our da our, our

output is, I like to say less wrong
than what they're looking at right now.

So you could say more correct,
but I like to say less wrong.

It, it still has to be one has to
move forward slowly because you could

actually, you know, cause a lot of
problems if you move too quickly.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah, no,
that, that makes a lot of sense.

So, So I, I'd be interested
in talking a little bit about

how AI is involved here now.

I know you, AI is a big part
of your platform and, and.

You know, for a marketer,
you just can't avoid ai.

It touches everything.

now how, how are you using AI to
you know, in like this probabilistic

marketing to replace kind of older
methods of, of tracking attribution?

How, how does that become
a part of the platform?

Jeff Greenfield: Yeah, no, great question.

And as a marketer, you shouldn't avoid ai.

AI is just newer, faster machines,
newer, faster computers, and it's,

it's, you know, it's the advancement of.

Many years of computing power.

So first off, we don't use any
of the current large language

models that are out there.

Everything we do is in-house.

So data does not actually
leave our system.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hm.

Jeff Greenfield: But, you know, to kind
of understand how marketing attribution

was done back in the day, there's
really two components that you take in.

You take in all of the click
data and you take in all the

impression data Impressions are.

The ads that are actually shown to people.

And historically that was done at the
user level, but that data's not available.

So when you start to think about what
is available, what's available is

daily level data, how many impressions
each day at a granular basis.

So we, we take all of that data.

That is publicly non
PII, non-user level data.

It comes into our platform and then
we go through a machine learning

process and we use AI internally.

It used to be, when we first built it
out, it was a four part process where

after each process a human would go in
and would do a series of checks and then

make a decision on what the next step is.

It, is it a through like.

T which, which one comes next?

So there was all these things that
humans had to be involved with.

We've now evolved that to where
we've trained internally AI

to take care of that for us.

Uh, we also use AI during
our validation process.

So after the models are complete,
what we wanna do is validate how

well is this model predicting.

And so what we do is we train the
model, just like you do, how you

train large language models, where you
train them with things, we train it.

With a month's worth of the client's
data where we give it all of the

marketing data, and let's say we're
looking at orders, we'll give it the

actual orders for those days, and then
after that month we say, okay, here's

the marketing data for a new day.

You have to guess.

What the order count is based
on what you were trained with.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: And then we look
at what is the predicted versus the

actual order count for each day.

And then from that we're able to determine
how valid is the model, how well is it

predicting and produce statist statistical
scores, like an R Square, which tells

us how well the model is predicting.

And then the error range, if you will,
of the model, which is called the mape.

What's important about all models is,
is it saying all models are wrong,

some are useful but the most important
component of the model is the data.

If the data is good, the model is great.

And when we have great data,
our models are predicting better

than 92% of the time with a bands
that are very, very, very small.

Uh, so as long as the data's good we
can predict incredibly well for clients.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
That's, that's really great.

Now, you know, we've had some developments
you mentioned earlier, the, you know,

with, regulations in Europe and decisions
by large companies like Google and

Facebook to limit cookie tracking,
in the next three to five years.

Do you see.

Further changes versus, you know, for data
availability for this kind of tracking.

Do you foresee further changes
in one direction or the other?

And, and what, what do you
think are the best, best things

we can do to plan for that?

Jeff Greenfield: Yeah, I mean when,
when you start to look at how things

have moved in the last couple of
years, and it's even before COVID,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: you know, there is
this move towards a more private.

Web browsing experience, but consumers
have also changed how they kind of

circumvent the web, if you will.

It used to be that we would go from
webpage to webpage to read news

and things like that, and now most
people spend the majority of their

time within apps, if you will.

So Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat,
Amazon's an app, and most of the

shopping experiences as well.

Are less on individual websites and
more in what we call these marketplaces.

So Amazon, Walmart, target, CVS,
chewy, these are all these own

kind of separate ecosystems.

And you know, it used to be that
Chewy, all they did was sell you know.

Dog food.

That was it.

Dog treats, cat food, that type of thing.

But now they're also selling advertising.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Jeff Greenfield: so when you start
to sell advertising, you realize

that your data is valuable and
you don't want it to leak out.

And so that's where the term came
from, what we call a walled garden.

So these are gardens, if you will,
where where people spend time.

But you, you, you can't get data out of
there unless you're a large advertiser.

But the problem is, is that.

I can take my own data that I own as
an advertiser and I can go to Amazon

and through what they call a clean
room, we can do a data swap, and then

I can target my customers in Amazon.

And then I say, Hey to Amazon, Hey,
I wanna do the same thing at Chewy.

Can I bring this data over there?

And they're like, oh, no, can't do that.

So then I have to duplicate
the same thing at Chewy.

So what's happened is we've seen this
proliferation of these, you could call

them all mini Internets, if you will.

Each one is its own kind of separate
environment, and that's the direction

that things will continue to evolve in.

We've also seen a change in terms of
like consumer behavior, in terms of TV

viewing, you know, a year and a half ago.

The TV networks like N-B-C-C-V-S, and
Fox, those where most people view things,

you know, for the last eight months in a
row in the us the number one TV network,

and we're talking on the big screen,
not on like a mobile device, is YouTube.

YouTube is the number
one TV network in the us

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Well.

Jeff Greenfield: Unbelievable.

So when we start to think about
changing behavior and changing habits,

things are moving very, very rapidly.

And also we're going to see the
availability and it's already

been announced of shopping via.

Chat, GPT and other large language models
where you can go in and say, you know,

I'm looking for the best air purifier.

And it comes up with one and,
you know, says, would you like

me to make this purchase for you?

Yes, I would love to.

And all that entire purchase will
be made within the chat GPT window.

You'll never even have
to go to the website.

So this is talk about a kind of
a massive shift, if you will.

So we're gonna see.

A lot of shifts in consumer behavior
and it's gonna impact from a.

Kind of from a marketing standpoint
of view, uh, in large brands,

because they're large, it takes
them a long time to catch up.

They're not nimble, they're not fast.

This is why startups and smaller
businesses have an advantage, because

their decision in terms of how
they do things, is they just have

to ask themselves, Hey, does this
seem like a good idea to do this?

You know, what's important
to understand is that.

Consumers right now when it comes to
purchasing products in the us, the

majority of searches happen on Amazon.

So if you're selling something,
you need to be on Amazon.

It used to be that those searches
happened in Google and then people

would click on an Amazon link and go to
Amazon, but now they go direct to Amazon.

But now for other types of searches, we've
seen that chat, GPT and some of the other.

AI platforms are starting to
take away more and more of

that search away from Google.

So now there's gonna be kind of
a new chore, if you will, for

smaller businesses, which is how
do I show up inside of chat GPT?

How do I ensure that I'm there?

And really what it comes down to is you
have to go back to what we did before.

You gotta have a website, you need to
make sure that your website is putting

out content, that it's up to date.

And so it's, we're in a back to the
future type mode because we need to

constantly give data for these engines
to take in, which is what we all had

to do in the early days with Google.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Wow.

Well, Jeff, lots to, lots to digest

Jeff Greenfield: Yeah.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: You know,
I, I think this has been a tremendous

interview and I appreciate you, you
sharing so much with, with our audience.

If somebody would like to work
with you or lytics, where are the

best places that they can find you?

Jeff Greenfield: Well, they
can always go to protic.com.

Best way to get there
is to go to get Prova.

That's G-E-T-P-R-O-V a.com.

Prova means proof.

So it's like, Hey, you know, I
wanna get proof for what I'm doing.

When you go there, there's
a resources section.

We've got a bunch of different downloads.

There's even a free attribution
certification course for folks that

want to geek out and understand
kind of the past, the present.

And what we see is the future of
marketing measurement, and you can

always find me on LinkedIn as well.

I tend to put a lot of content
out there along the same lines of

what we talked about here today.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Awesome.

Thank you so much, Jeff.

This was great.

Jeff Greenfield: Oh, it's
been a pleasure read.

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: Want to stay ahead of what's
actually working in marketing right now.

Head over to Market surge.io

and see how we're helping businesses
grow smarter, faster, and louder.

That's market surge.io

because your next breakthrough
shouldn't be a guess.