How to Set up Third Party Ad Tracking with Cometly

Cometly was built to solve a specific and increasingly painful problem: how to accurately track, dedupe, and understand conversions across outbound email, LinkedIn, Meta, Google, and Bing—without relying on fragile browser-based tracking or siloed platform reports.

In this article, we’ll walk through how Cometly fits into a modern B2B growth system, why it’s different from native tracking, and how to set it up in a way that actually improves both reporting and ad performance.

Why Native Ad Tracking Breaks Down in B2B

Most companies start with native conversion tracking. Pixels are installed, thank-you pages are marked as conversions, and dashboards begin filling with data. At first, everything looks fine—until spend increases or sales cycles lengthen.

The problems appear quickly:

Conversions are duplicated across platforms.
Meta claims the lead. Google claims the lead. LinkedIn claims the lead.
Reporting becomes inflated and misleading.

Worse, privacy changes make pixel-based tracking unreliable. Browsers block cookies. iOS limits attribution windows. A single user across multiple devices looks like multiple people.

For B2B companies with higher ACVs and longer sales cycles, this leads to poor optimization decisions. Channels that influence demand look unprofitable. Channels that capture demand look like heroes. The reality is more nuanced—and native tools aren’t built to handle that nuance.

This is the gap Cometly fills.

What Cometly Actually Does

Cometly acts as a centralized attribution layer between your website, your CRM, and your ad platforms.

Instead of relying on each platform’s pixel to independently guess what happened, Cometly tracks the entire user journey in one place. Every visit, click, and conversion is associated with a single identity. When a conversion occurs, Cometly determines how it should be attributed and then sends clean, deduplicated conversion data back to each ad platform via API.

This does two critical things at once:

It gives you accurate, cross-channel reporting.
It feeds higher-quality conversion data back into Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and Bing—improving optimization.

In other words, Cometly isn’t just a reporting tool. It actively improves ad performance.

Where Cometly Fits in the Growth System

Cometly works best when outbound, LinkedIn, and paid ads are already in motion.

Cold email and LinkedIn create awareness and intent.
Ads reinforce messaging and build omnipresence.
Cometly ties everything together and shows how influence turns into revenue.

This is especially important for companies running ABM strategies, matched audience ads, or long nurturing cycles where conversions may happen weeks or months after the first touch.

Step One: Install the Cometly Tracking Layer

The setup process starts with installing Cometly’s tracking on your website.

Once installed, Cometly assigns a unique identifier to each visitor. This identifier persists across sessions and channels, allowing Cometly to map activity even when cookies fail or devices change.

This step is typically straightforward, and Cometly’s onboarding team assists directly to ensure the tracking layer is working correctly. Unlike many analytics tools, this setup does not require heavy engineering work for most companies.

From this point forward, every meaningful interaction on your site can be attributed reliably.

Step Two: Connect Your Ad Platforms

Next, Cometly is connected to your advertising platforms—Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and Microsoft Ads.

These connections allow Cometly to send conversion data back to each platform using server-side APIs. This bypasses browser limitations entirely and ensures platforms receive consistent, accurate signals.

Each platform still receives conversion data, but now it’s coming from a single, trusted source instead of fragmented pixels.

This is the foundation for deduplication.

Step Three: Define Your Conversion Events

With tracking and integrations in place, you define what actually counts as a conversion.

For most B2B companies, this includes events like:

Lead form submissions
Demo requests
Applications
Qualified pipeline milestones
Closed-won revenue

Because Cometly integrates with your CRM, these events can be tracked well beyond simple thank-you pages. This allows you to optimize not just for leads, but for qualified leads, opportunities, or even revenue—depending on your maturity.

This is a major upgrade from pixel-only tracking.

Step Four: Choose an Attribution Model

One of Cometly’s biggest advantages is flexibility in attribution modeling.

Instead of being locked into last-click or first-click reporting, you can view performance through multiple lenses:

First touch to understand awareness creation
Last touch to understand demand capture
Linear to see full-funnel contribution
U-shaped to emphasize discovery and conversion moments

For most B2B teams, U-shaped attribution provides the most realistic view of performance—especially when outbound, LinkedIn, and ads all contribute at different stages.

The key is not finding a “perfect” model, but using consistent models to make better decisions over time.

How Cometly Improves Ad Performance

One of the most overlooked benefits of Cometly is how it improves optimization inside ad platforms.

When platforms receive clean, deduplicated conversion data, their algorithms learn faster and target more accurately. Instead of optimizing toward noisy or duplicated events, they optimize toward real outcomes.

This often leads to:

Lower cost per qualified lead
Higher lead quality
More consistent performance at scale

Cometly doesn’t replace Meta, Google, or LinkedIn—it makes them smarter.

Cometly vs Native Tools

Many teams ask whether they can achieve the same results with HubSpot, Google Analytics, or platform-native APIs.

While those tools can work, they often require complex setups, ongoing maintenance, and deep technical knowledge. Even then, deduplication across platforms remains difficult.

Cometly’s advantage is simplicity combined with accuracy. It centralizes attribution, handles API complexity, and provides a clean interface designed specifically for B2B SaaS.

For teams that value clarity and speed over custom-built complexity, Cometly is often the most practical solution.

Final Thoughts

Third-party ad tracking is no longer optional for B2B companies running serious outbound and paid media programs. As channels multiply and buyer journeys lengthen, the need for accurate, centralized attribution becomes unavoidable.

Cometly provides a clear path forward. It simplifies setup, improves data quality, and helps teams understand what’s actually driving growth—without getting lost in fragmented dashboards.

When combined with outbound email, LinkedIn automation, and ABM ads, Cometly becomes the connective tissue that turns activity into insight and insight into scale.

If you want your marketing system to operate as a true growth engine—not a collection of disconnected tactics—third-party tracking with Cometly is one of the most important investments you can make.