Tag Archives: conversions

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

Live Webinar: Website Conversions & Audience Remarketing

The Google Ads API Developer Relations team will be hosting a live webinar, Website Conversions & Audience Remarketing with the Google Ads API, on December 11 at 10 AM EST (3 PM GMT).

Mark your calendar


Prerequisites
In order to get the most out of this webinar, we suggest you develop a basic understanding of the Google Ads API. In order to learn more, please visit our API Overview documentation or check out this Google Ads API Overview workshop from 2019. In addition, you may find this post useful to learn how conversion tracking works in Google Ads.

Agenda
The webinar will cover the topics below and include code walkthroughs to demonstrate how to perform different actions with the Google Ads API client libraries. We will also be hosting a live Q&A at the end.
  • What conversion actions are
  • How to create and utilize conversion actions
  • How remarketing works in the Google Ads API
  • How to define different audience types
  • How to measure audience performance
Reminders
Feel free to add the event to your calendar. In addition, you can set a reminder for the event on YouTube by clicking the “Set reminder” button on the YouTube event page.

We look forward to sharing our knowledge of the Google Ads API with you and answering your questions. If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum or at [email protected].
- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Google Ads conversion reporting issues starting April 9

Update (April 10, 2020 19:35 PST): Conversion data in all reports has been fixed.

An issue that impacted Google Ads reporting for Search and Shopping conversions occurring between April 9 and April 10 (Pacific Time) for advertisers using non-last click attribution models has been fixed and the data is now correct in all reports.
If you downloaded any of the fields in the table below or any derivative custom columns using the AdWords API, Google Ads API and Google Ads scriptsbetween April 9th 8:00 PM PST and April 10th 7:20 PM PST, you may have incorrect data in your systems. Please re-download the affected fields to ensure accurate conversions reporting.
We appreciate your patience as we worked to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

AdWords API Google Ads API beta
Conversions
ConversionValue
ConversionRate
ValuePerConversion
CostPerConversion
AllConversions
AllConversionValue
AllConversionRate
ValuePerAllConversion
CostPerAllConversion
CurrentModelAttributedConversions
CurrentModelAttributedConversionValue
ValuePerCurrentModelAttributedConversion
CostPerCurrentModelAttributedConversion		 metrics.all_conversions
metrics.all_conversions_from_click_to_call
metrics.all_conversions_from_interactions_rate
metrics.all_conversions_from_interactions_value_per_interaction
metrics.all_conversions_value
metrics.all_conversions_value_per_cost
metrics.conversions
metrics.conversions_from_interactions_rate
metrics.conversions_from_interactions_value_per_interaction
metrics.conversions_value
metrics.conversions_value_per_cost
metrics.cost_per_all_conversions
metrics.cost_per_conversion
metrics.cost_per_current_model_attributed_conversion
metrics.cross_device_conversions
metrics.current_model_attributed_conversions
metrics.current_model_attributed_conversions_from_interactions_rate
metrics.current_model_attributed_conversions_from_interactions_value_per_interaction
metrics.current_model_attributed_conversions_value
metrics.current_model_attributed_conversions_value_per_cost
metrics.value_per_all_conversions
metrics.value_per_conversion
metrics.value_per_current_model_attributed_conversion


On April 9, 2020 at approximately 8pm PST, a bug caused Google Ads Search and Shopping conversions occurring between April 9 12:01 AM PST onwards to be underreported for advertisers using non-last click attribution models. This bug impacts reports in all Google Ads interfaces, including any report data downloaded via the AdWords API, Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts. Google Ads bid strategies are not impacted by this issue.
We are actively working on fixing the bug and correcting the conversion data.

- Josh Radcliff, Google Ads API Team