Wondering if anyone else has had this experience? If so what was the outcome after you contacted vendor and CB! I am currently patiently waiting for a response from both!
It's normal to have more conversions in adwords. The user might've clicked your link, but then left your page, and continued to search for other reviews or stuff like that, and bought via another affiliate link. That way, someone else gets your sale. It's normal
This is why you should also use clickbank's tid for ad tracking. Do not base your adwords spending on their conversion numbers, or like ParthS said, you'll lose money. Make sure you know what your actual conversion numbers are by using other tracking methods along side adwords conversion code. This is how it works for a false adwords conversion - When a customer clicks on your ad, google puts a cookie on their system unique for your ad. Then if the customer backs out of your site, and goes to another ad, then google puts a cookie on their system unique to that ad. The other ad may be another affiliate selling the same thing you are. Then when the customer buys from the other ad, and arrives at the "thankyou" page, it triggers your google conversion code on that page, which makes google look for the cookie unique to your original ad. When it finds it on the customer's computer it triggers a conversion for your account. Thus customer buys from another clickbank affiliate, and you get a false conversion. I know that was probably way too confusing of an explanation. But this is why many vendors use scripting to allow affiliates to put their adwords conversion code onto the end of the hoplink url. That way only one conversion code is on the thankyou page at a time.