Google Ads Conversion Tracking: Why you should switch now!

How many users performed an action on your website that resulted in a sale, registration, or download? The success of any marketing campaign depends on the answer to this question. If you use Google Ads, you’ve probably heard of conversion tracking. But do you know why it’s so important to switch to the latest conversion tracking?

Over the years, Google has continued to improve and refine its conversion tracking to give advertisers more control and insight into their campaigns. The latest version of this technology offers significant advantages over the earlier versions you may still be using.

Various improvements in favor of the privacy of all users of Google Search were followed by a series of
recommendations for advertisers
. The topics of site-wide tagging, Google Consent Mode and advanced conversions are becoming an absolute must in Google Ads management. At least, if you want to compensate for measurement gaps and make the maximum number of actual conversions visible in the account.

In this blog post, we’ll look at the reasons why it’s time to switch to the latest Google Ads conversion tracking. From improved data analytics to better alignment with your marketing goals, there are plenty of reasons why you should make the switch now!

On the basis of which tag is measured?

But even within the tracking tags offered by Google itself, there are now quite significant differences. The sentence “We measure everything on the basis of Google Analytics” is no longer tenable in 2022. The reason for this is that the web analytics service Google Analytics is now partly completely blocked by various plug-ins or browsers trimmed for data protection.
Current complaints and judgments
in the EU dealing with the privacy-compliant processing of the collected data do not necessarily make the situation any clearer.

Regardless, differences between Google Analytics tracking and tracking via the Google Ads tag have been known for a long time. Google itself has been presenting this transparently for some time:
Compare measured values from Google Analytics and Google Ads
. But what is the best way to obtain sufficient data for your Google Ads campaigns?

Here, we can definitely see that the measurement differences between the two variants increase, sometimes dramatically. While it used to be between 10% and 20% measurement loss that was “normal” with Google Analytics, it is not uncommon to see deviations of 40% today. For some advertisers, this is problematic for the meaningful use of their own bidding strategies. Switching tracking to the Google Ads tag without interposing Google Analytics as a conversion source then definitely makes sense.

Example: Tracking differences in e-commerce

In the example shown here, we are dealing with the data of an online store of just 14 days. Over this time, a measurement difference of 30% has already accumulated. Over 27,000 euros in revenue would not have been allocated to Google Ads or the correct campaign. The longer the period under consideration, the wider the gap in tracked sales. For bidding strategies such as target ROAS or target CPA, such measurement differences are real performance killers. They lead to campaigns being rated worse than they actually perform. Worse, bidding strategies lack valuable conversion data to achieve advertising goals or optimal market position.

What advertisers should do now

Also, because the discussion about measurement loss is not new, there are clear recommendations on how to meaningfully support the best possible campaign performance. At the same time, user privacy choices, such as the cookie banner, are definitely taken into account.

#1 Test tracking directly through Google Ads and stop interposing Google Analytics.

#2 It’s best to continue using Google Analytics for your web and channel statistics, but no longer for importing conversion actions.

#3 Make meaningful adjustments to your bidding strategies based on the newly collected data. Example: If 40% more orders can be tracked all of a sudden, target ROAS or target CPA bids obviously need to be adjusted in a meaningful way.

#4 Have Google Consent Mode (tracking without cookies) and Enhanced Conversions (anonymized matching with logged-in Google accounts) set up.

With these four steps, advertisers currently have a good chance of staying one step ahead of the competition in Google Ads.