When you're spending over $200,000 a day across fragmented media channels, attribution isn't a marketing challenge anymore. It's a systems problem. This particular campaign crossed over CTV, mobile app installs, and web, each managed by a different team. The tracking setup was chaotic. GTM on one side, server-to-server on another, and a few placements had nothing but bare pixels. Signals were dropping. Conversions misattributed. Spend was climbing.

I created a temporary patch: a Kafka-based bridge syncing click and view events directly to our CRM in 500-millisecond windows. Then we layered in decision logic based on signal strength and time decay, not just last click. We stabilized reporting within 72 hours.

This kind of complexity isn't unusual at scale. What's unusual is treating it like a technical fault instead of a political one. Every stakeholder wants their channel to look good. But nothing looks better than truth which can sometimes make folks unhappy, especially those who want their channel to look good when it actually looks like shit.