Tag Archives: conversions

Optimally configure the Attribution Reporting API for ad measurement

Background

Ad-tech providers have historically used third-party cookies for conversion measurement, and for attributing conversions to ad interactions. Conversion measurement is critical for evaluating the performance of ad campaigns and automated bidding strategies. Now, with technology changes and privacy regulations on the rise, traditional ad-measurement systems must change in order to remain effective while protecting user privacy.

Chrome’s Attribution Reporting API (ARA), part of the Privacy Sandbox initiative, offers a new path to conversion measurement after Chrome’s planned third-party cookie deprecation in the second half of 2024, subject to addressing any remaining competition concerns of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Google’s ads teams have made significant investments in learning to use the ARA more effectively, to help advertisers achieve more accurate measurement.

In a previous post, we provided a high-level overview of the approach Google’s ads teams are taking to effectively blend the ARA event-level and aggregate summary reports to maximize accuracy. A key point is that your configuration determines what data you query, and how you query it. It’s crucial for ad-tech providers to effectively configure the ARA for their use cases. Google’s ads teams have found that configuring specific ARA settings can lead to notable accuracy improvements. We encourage other ad-tech providers to integrate with the ARA to retrieve the conversion data they need, and process the ARA's output to help maintain accurate measurement in a post-third-party-cookie world.

The ARA is flexible to support various use cases. Google’s ads teams use this flexibility to configure unique ARA settings for each advertiser. This way, ARA-based measurement adapts to each advertiser’s specific needs. For example, we’ve noticed that when advertisers differ in conversion volume, it’s better to have advertiser-specific configurations related to the granularity of aggregation keys and the maximum observable conversions per ad interaction.

Google’s ads teams’ approach

Here's how Google's ads teams use the ARA to ensure the raw data we receive is as useful as possible for downstream blending. We configure ARA settings as explicit mathematical optimizations by defining objective functions to represent data quality, then choosing settings to optimize those functions. Ad-tech providers can choose their own approach. Google’s ads teams plan to continue sharing insights we learn from our own optimizations with the ad-tech community.

Please see our detailed technical explainer for more information about our approach to ARA configuration.

- Harikesh Nair, Senior Director, Data Science, Ads Measurement

Google Ads API support for importing and editing conversions from Google Analytics

What's changing
Starting October 9, 2023, the Google Ads API will allow the following types of mutate operations for a ConversionAction imported from a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property:
  1. An update that modifies status, primary_for_goal, category, name, or value_settings.
  2. A remove that removes the conversion action.
Why this is important
For many Google Ads users, the conversions they import from Google Analytics are a critical component of bidding and reporting. Until now, you could use the Google Analytics Admin API to create a link between your Google Analytics and Ads accounts, but you could not use the Google Ads API to complete the following remaining steps in the linking process: With this change, the Google Ads API supports both of these steps and provides a complete API-based solution for linking your Google Analytics 4 property to your Google Ads account.

In addition to the attributes needed for proper configuration of conversion goals, you can now modify the following attributes of an imported GA4 ConversionAction:
  • name
  • value_settings
Requests that attempt to modify any other attributes of an imported GA4 ConversionAction will continue to fail, as will requests that attempt to remove or update a ConversionAction imported from a Universal Analytics (UA) property.

What you should do
Modify any code in your integration that depends on the Google Ads API rejecting a ConversionActionOperation with a MUTATE_NOT_ALLOWED error if it attempts to update or remove an imported GA4 conversion. For example, if your integration relies on this behavior to detect if a conversion action is an imported GA4 conversion, modify it to instead check if the type of the ConversionAction is either GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_4_CUSTOM or GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_4_PURCHASE.

In addition, if you currently complete the process of linking Google Analytics to Google Ads accounts using the UI, consider whether switching to an API-based solution is appropriate for your use case.

How to get help
If you have any questions or need help, check out the Google Ads API support page for options.
- Josh Radcliff, Google Analytics and Google Ads API Team

Effectively use the Attribution Reporting API for ad measurement

Overview

Historically, ad-tech providers have used third-party cookies (3PC) as a mechanism for conversion measurement, and for attributing conversions to ad interactions. Conversion measurement provides critical ad performance data to advertisers, and helps optimize auction-based bidding strategies.

Currently, the online advertising ecosystem is pivoting towards improved ways to protect user privacy. Chrome’s Attribution Reporting API (ARA), a part of the larger Privacy Sandbox initiative, offers an alternative for measurement after the third-party cookie deprecation in 2024. Ad-tech providers, including Google’s ads platforms, should consider adopting the ARA to maintain high-quality conversion measurement and support the pivot toward user privacy protection.

Google Ads has made significant investments to use the ARA more effectively and to help advertisers achieve more accurate measurement. We encourage other ad-tech providers to integrate with the ARA, configure the integration to retrieve the data they need, and process the ARA's output to help maintain accurate measurement after the planned third-party cookie deprecation in 2024.

Goals of the ARA

The ARA has two goals:

  • Protect users’ cross-site and cross-app identities from ad-tech providers, advertisers, publishers and other entities by using differential privacy techniques, such as aggregation, or adding an element of noise to the data.
  • Provide useful measurement information to ad-tech providers, advertisers, and publishers.

The ARA represents a change to both the format and granularity of conversion data available to ad-tech providers. As a result, ad-tech providers must change their current measurement protocols in order to start leveraging the ARA.

A glimpse into our approach

Ad-tech providers who participate in the Privacy Sandbox initiative receive data from the ARA in two forms: event-level reports and aggregate summary reports. This way, two independent views of the same underlying data are available. We encourage ad-tech providers to configure the reporting settings in the API to optimize for better measurement accuracy without 3PC, as well as improve how these two types of reports can be post-processed and used together.

There are many possible ways to utilize the ARA reports. The methodology that works for an ad-tech provider will ultimately depend on its conversion data and measurement requirements. Google Ads has found that leveraging both report types can help the industry benefit from the strengths of each report.

Google Ads leverages both event types to produce a more complete, ad event-level log. We are committed to sharing our process and engaging with the ecosystem to help our partners and the broader industry transition into a future without third-party cookies.

For more details on how we’re implementing the Attribution Reporting API, please refer to our detailed technical guide.

Harikesh Nair, Director, Data Science, Ads Measurement

Prepare to test Privacy Sandbox APIs with Google’s ads platforms

Last week, Chrome announced the upcoming general availability of Privacy Sandbox APIs for the ads ecosystem. We welcome this opportunity to test these APIs in Google’s ads platforms, and we invite ad technology partners to get involved and be ready for Chrome’s third-party cookie deprecation in 2024.

We’ve seen encouraging results from our recent interest-based advertising experiments, and we plan to integrate Topics, Protected Audience and Attribution Reporting APIs into our ads products. We’ll use Privacy Sandbox APIs alongside other privacy-preserving innovations to help deliver relevant ads and accurate measurement insights without the need to track people across the web.

We encourage advertisers and publishers to continue to adopt the full range of Google’s privacy-first ads solutions, and encourage their ad technology platform partners to adopt and test Privacy Sandbox APIs.

Through the rest of 2023, we will work with our ad technology partners to test the Privacy Sandbox APIs alongside first-party data and AI-powered solutions, and prepare for Q1 2024 when Chrome plans to deprecate third-party cookies for one percent of its users. The Q1 2024 tests will help us to evaluate the effectiveness of these solutions, and share our findings with Chrome, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, and the industry.

We encourage technology partners to review the below guidance to prepare for testing with Google’s Ads solutions:
  • If you’re a Google Authorized Buyer or participant in Open Bidding, see integration guidance for Topics and Protected Audience.
  • If you’re a publisher platform working with Google Ads or Google Marketing Platform (Display & Video 360 or Campaign Manager 360), see integration guidance for Topics, Protected Audience and Multiple seller testing.
  • If you’re a measurement provider working with Google Marketing Platform (Display & Video 360 or Campaign Manager 360), see integration guidance for the Protected Audience API.
  • If you’re a publisher or ad tech provider working with Google Marketing Platform (Display & Video 360, Campaign Manager 360 or Search Ads 360), see integration guidance for the Attribution Reporting API.
We’re excited to continue building privacy-first innovations that help partners drive performance, earn revenue and get accurate measurement insights without third-party cookies.
Dan Taylor, Vice President, Global Ads

Upcoming changes to Google Analytics audiences and conversions in Google Ads

What's changing

Starting in April 2023, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will automatically set up a basic GA4 property linked to your Google Ads account if the Google Ads account still uses Universal Analyticsconversions and/or audiences.

During this process, GA4 will configure corresponding conversions and/or audiences in GA4 and apply them in your Google Ads account. This will happen even if you already have a GA4 property but still use Universal Analytics conversions and/or audiences in Google Ads.

Options for handling these changes

The configuration created by GA4 may not be set up to meet your specific business goals or capture all the historical data you need, so we recommend you start manually moving your conversions and/or audiences to GA4 now.

If you don’t want the GA4 Setup Assistant to make these changes, you may opt out by the end of April.

If you don’t want an automatically set up GA4 property at all, you can also opt out of the entire process.

What you should know

Universal Analytics standard properties will stop processing new data from July 1, 2023 onwards. GA4, our next-generation measurement solution, will become the sole Google Analytics standard property type.

This impacts Universal Analytics conversions, audiences, and site stats currently used in your Google Ads campaigns. We recommend that you switch to GA4 now to ensure your campaigns and ad groups are effectively moved to GA4 conversions, site stats, and audiences. If you’re unsure whether a GA4 property has been created, please contact the admin user for your Universal Analytics property in Google Analytics to verify.

Resources to help you migrate to Google Analytics 4

For an overview of functionality and features in UA and GA4, including APIs, check out the Universal Analytics to GA4 migration reference.

For API integrations:

  • If you previously used the Google Analytics Management API v3 to manage your Universal Analytics properties, migrate to the Admin API v1.
  • If you previously used the Google Analytics Reporting API v4 to run reports in your Universal Analytics properties, migrate to the Data API v1.

How to get help


- Josh Radcliff, Google Analytics and Google Ads API Team

Upcoming changes to conversion action management

Starting August 22, 2022, the include_in_conversions_metric field of the ConversionAction resource will become read-only. Requests that attempt to set this value will result in a FieldError.IMMUTABLE_FIELD error.

Why is this change happening?
As part of the addition of conversion goals in Google Ads, the new primary_for_goal field replaced the include_in_conversions_metric field. To ease the transition to the new field while we enabled goals on all accounts, the Google Ads API allowed you to continue to set the deprecated include_in_conversions_metric field, and the API would automatically update primary_for_goal accordingly. However, now that conversion goals are enabled in all Google Ads accounts, we're preventing setting include_in_conversions_metric to avoid conflicts with primary_for_goal.

What should you do?
Modify any code that sets include_in_conversions_metrics to instead set primary_for_goal. In addition, review and modify any of your application logic that uses the conversion_action.include_in_conversions_metric field in reports. Check out the conversion goals guide for more information on how the primary_for_goal setting impacts bidding and reporting.

If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.
- Josh Radcliff, Google Ads API Team

Upcoming changes to conversion action management

Starting August 22, 2022, the include_in_conversions_metric field of the ConversionAction resource will become read-only. Requests that attempt to set this value will result in a FieldError.IMMUTABLE_FIELD error.

Why is this change happening?
As part of the addition of conversion goals in Google Ads, the new primary_for_goal field replaced the include_in_conversions_metric field. To ease the transition to the new field while we enabled goals on all accounts, the Google Ads API allowed you to continue to set the deprecated include_in_conversions_metric field, and the API would automatically update primary_for_goal accordingly. However, now that conversion goals are enabled in all Google Ads accounts, we're preventing setting include_in_conversions_metric to avoid conflicts with primary_for_goal.

What should you do?
Modify any code that sets include_in_conversions_metrics to instead set primary_for_goal. In addition, review and modify any of your application logic that uses the conversion_action.include_in_conversions_metric field in reports. Check out the conversion goals guide for more information on how the primary_for_goal setting impacts bidding and reporting.

If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.
- Josh Radcliff, Google Ads API Team

Upcoming changes to conversion action management

Starting August 22, 2022, the include_in_conversions_metric field of the ConversionAction resource will become read-only. Requests that attempt to set this value will result in a FieldError.IMMUTABLE_FIELD error.

Why is this change happening?
As part of the addition of conversion goals in Google Ads, the new primary_for_goal field replaced the include_in_conversions_metric field. To ease the transition to the new field while we enabled goals on all accounts, the Google Ads API allowed you to continue to set the deprecated include_in_conversions_metric field, and the API would automatically update primary_for_goal accordingly. However, now that conversion goals are enabled in all Google Ads accounts, we're preventing setting include_in_conversions_metric to avoid conflicts with primary_for_goal.

What should you do?
Modify any code that sets include_in_conversions_metrics to instead set primary_for_goal. In addition, review and modify any of your application logic that uses the conversion_action.include_in_conversions_metric field in reports. Check out the conversion goals guide for more information on how the primary_for_goal setting impacts bidding and reporting.

If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.
- Josh Radcliff, Google Ads API Team

Upcoming changes to conversion action management

Starting August 22, 2022, the include_in_conversions_metric field of the ConversionAction resource will become read-only. Requests that attempt to set this value will result in a FieldError.IMMUTABLE_FIELD error.

Why is this change happening?
As part of the addition of conversion goals in Google Ads, the new primary_for_goal field replaced the include_in_conversions_metric field. To ease the transition to the new field while we enabled goals on all accounts, the Google Ads API allowed you to continue to set the deprecated include_in_conversions_metric field, and the API would automatically update primary_for_goal accordingly. However, now that conversion goals are enabled in all Google Ads accounts, we're preventing setting include_in_conversions_metric to avoid conflicts with primary_for_goal.

What should you do?
Modify any code that sets include_in_conversions_metrics to instead set primary_for_goal. In addition, review and modify any of your application logic that uses the conversion_action.include_in_conversions_metric field in reports. Check out the conversion goals guide for more information on how the primary_for_goal setting impacts bidding and reporting.

If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.
- Josh Radcliff, Google Ads API Team

Changes to conversion columns in AdWords API and Scripts

What's changing?
We are introducing restrictions on certain combinations of conversion columns in AdWords API and Google Ads scripts reports. If your reporting queries include these column combinations, you need to fix your queries before Feb 15, 2021.

Technical details
Starting the week of Feb 15, 2021, you will receive a ReportDefinitionError.INVALID_FIELD_NAME_FOR_REPORT error if your AdWords API report request contains columns from both of the restricted column sets listed below. Similarly, calls to the AdsApp.report method in Google Ads scripts will fail for queries with these restricted column combinations.

Restricted conversion columns:
  • ConversionAdjustment
  • ConversionAdjustmentLagBucket
  • ConversionAttributionEventType
  • ConversionCategoryName
  • ConversionLagBucket
  • ConversionTrackerId
  • ConversionTypeName
Metrics columns:
  • AllConversionRate
  • ConversionRate
  • CostPerAllConversion
  • CostPerConversion
  • CostPerCurrentModelAttributedConversion
The ReportDefinitionService.getReportFields method will reflect these restrictions in the exclusiveFields list of each impacted column.

What should you do?
Before Feb 15, 2021, review and modify the reporting queries in your AdWords API and Google Ads scripts applications to stop using the prohibited column combinations.

Why is this changing?
These column combinations are currently disallowed by the Google Ads UI, Google Ads Editor and the Google Ads API. This change makes the AdWords API and Google Ads scripts behaviour consistent with the rest of the Google Ads platform.

If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.
- Anash P. Oommen, Google Ads API Team