Tag Archives: conversions

Add Conversion Environment to Google Ads Conversion Imports

Starting on June 30, 2025, in-app conversions imported through the Google Ads API must include a value for the ClickConversion.conversion_environment field. See this article for more details.

For developers importing in-app conversions, please observe these considerations:

  1. In-app conversions are defined as any conversion events that occur within an app, such as purchase, add to cart, or sign up.
  2. For existing campaigns, if you do not include the conversion_environment field when importing conversions, that will negatively impact bidding, resulting in fewer conversions and worse overall performance.
  3. For new campaigns, if you upload conversion_environment data, that will directly improve campaign performance by driving additional app conversions.
  4. The presence or absence of the conversion_environment parameter does not impact conversion uploads. These conversions will still be consumed and reported, with no error messages.

If you have any questions or need help, see the Google Ads API support page for options.

- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Add Conversion Environment to Google Ads Conversion Imports

Starting on June 30, 2025, in-app conversions imported through the Google Ads API must include a value for the ClickConversion.conversion_environment field. See this article for more details.

For developers importing in-app conversions, please observe these considerations:

  1. In-app conversions are defined as any conversion events that occur within an app, such as purchase, add to cart, or sign up.
  2. For existing campaigns, if you do not include the conversion_environment field when importing conversions, that will negatively impact bidding, resulting in fewer conversions and worse overall performance.
  3. For new campaigns, if you upload conversion_environment data, that will directly improve campaign performance by driving additional app conversions.
  4. The presence or absence of the conversion_environment parameter does not impact conversion uploads. These conversions will still be consumed and reported, with no error messages.

If you have any questions or need help, see the Google Ads API support page for options.

- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Add Conversion Environment to Google Ads Conversion Imports

Starting on June 30, 2025, in-app conversions imported through the Google Ads API must include a value for the ClickConversion.conversion_environment field. See this article for more details.

For developers importing in-app conversions, please observe these considerations:

  1. In-app conversions are defined as any conversion events that occur within an app, such as purchase, add to cart, or sign up.
  2. For existing campaigns, if you do not include the conversion_environment field when importing conversions, that will negatively impact bidding, resulting in fewer conversions and worse overall performance.
  3. For new campaigns, if you upload conversion_environment data, that will directly improve campaign performance by driving additional app conversions.
  4. The presence or absence of the conversion_environment parameter does not impact conversion uploads. These conversions will still be consumed and reported, with no error messages.

If you have any questions or need help, see the Google Ads API support page for options.

- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Add Conversion Environment to Google Ads Conversion Imports

Starting on June 30, 2025, in-app conversions imported through the Google Ads API must include a value for the ClickConversion.conversion_environment field. See this article for more details.

For developers importing in-app conversions, please observe these considerations:

  1. In-app conversions are defined as any conversion events that occur within an app, such as purchase, add to cart, or sign up.
  2. For existing campaigns, if you do not include the conversion_environment field when importing conversions, that will negatively impact bidding, resulting in fewer conversions and worse overall performance.
  3. For new campaigns, if you upload conversion_environment data, that will directly improve campaign performance by driving additional app conversions.
  4. The presence or absence of the conversion_environment parameter does not impact conversion uploads. These conversions will still be consumed and reported, with no error messages.

If you have any questions or need help, see the Google Ads API support page for options.

- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Add Conversion Environment to Google Ads Conversion Imports

Starting on June 30, 2025, in-app conversions imported through the Google Ads API must include a value for the ClickConversion.conversion_environment field. See this article for more details.

For developers importing in-app conversions, please observe these considerations:

  1. In-app conversions are defined as any conversion events that occur within an app, such as purchase, add to cart, or sign up.
  2. For existing campaigns, if you do not include the conversion_environment field when importing conversions, that will negatively impact bidding, resulting in fewer conversions and worse overall performance.
  3. For new campaigns, if you upload conversion_environment data, that will directly improve campaign performance by driving additional app conversions.
  4. The presence or absence of the conversion_environment parameter does not impact conversion uploads. These conversions will still be consumed and reported, with no error messages.

If you have any questions or need help, see the Google Ads API support page for options.

- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Add Conversion Environment to Google Ads Conversion Imports

Starting on June 30, 2025, in-app conversions imported through the Google Ads API must include a value for the ClickConversion.conversion_environment field. See this article for more details.

For developers importing in-app conversions, please observe these considerations:

  1. In-app conversions are defined as any conversion events that occur within an app, such as purchase, add to cart, or sign up.
  2. For existing campaigns, if you do not include the conversion_environment field when importing conversions, that will negatively impact bidding, resulting in fewer conversions and worse overall performance.
  3. For new campaigns, if you upload conversion_environment data, that will directly improve campaign performance by driving additional app conversions.
  4. The presence or absence of the conversion_environment parameter does not impact conversion uploads. These conversions will still be consumed and reported, with no error messages.

If you have any questions or need help, see the Google Ads API support page for options.

- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Improvements to conversion adjustment uploads

Starting on September 9, 2024, Google Ads API users will no longer need to wait 24 hours before uploading conversion adjustments - they can be uploaded immediately after the original conversion has been uploaded or recorded by Google tags.

This means that you will no longer need to keep track of the 24-hour window before uploading conversion adjustments, and can stop checking for certain error codes and retrying those upload requests.

Specifically, the following changes will take effect:

  1. The following error codes will no longer be returned in responses from the UploadConversionAdjustments method, and will no longer be visible in diagnostic reports:
  2. Conversion adjustments that would previously be rejected with these error codes will count towards the pending_count in diagnostics until they’re processed, at which point they’ll be counted towards either the successful_count or failed_count fields. This might take up to 24 hours.

Here is how these changes will affect older Google Ads API versions v15 and v16:

  1. The following error codes will no longer be returned in responses from the UploadConversionAdjustments method, and will no longer be visible in diagnostic reports:
  2. Any conversion that would have triggered these codes will, in diagnostic reports, count towards the total_event_count metric while being processed. Once processing is completed they will be counted towards either the successful_count or failed_count. This might take up to 24 hours.

What do I need to do?

  1. Remove any logic from your application that waits before uploading adjustments, and begin uploading conversion adjustments at any time after the original conversion has been uploaded.
  2. Modify your application logic and business processes so that you are not tracking the two conversion adjustment errors that are being removed.
  3. If you rely on the successful or failed event count metrics, revisit your application logic with the understanding that some uploaded events may, at times, when using v17, be represented as pending.

If you have any questions or need help, see the Google Ads API support page for options.

- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

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