You’re capturing the referral object from WhatsApp Click-to-WhatsApp ads, but revenue-per-ad numbers still look wrong. These are the usual reasons.

Referral not saved

It only arrives with the first message from an ad click. If your webhook handler skips it, or only processes text, the source is lost for good. Save it before anything else.

Phone format mismatch

WhatsApp sends 919876543210. WooCommerce stores +91 98765 43210 or 09876543210. Normalise both sides to digits with the country code before matching.

Repeat buyer, old ad

A customer clicked ad A in March and ad B today. Overwriting the source loses history, and never overwriting credits the wrong ad. Store every touch with a timestamp and pick by your attribution rule.

Order placed from another number

The chat came from one number, and the order used a family member’s. Add a fallback match on email, or ask for the order number in chat.

No ad ID in reports

Reports show “Click-to-WhatsApp” as the source but not which ad.…