Enhanced Conversions For Google Ads

With privacy being more and more of a concern for people, companies are increasingly adjusting to these valid concerns. For example, in the Spring of 2021 Apple released an update that required apps that use tracking, must have a prompt that allows people to opt out. Apple no longer allows the data collection and sharing unless users opt in on iOS 14.5 or later. 

One of the major drawbacks to this is tracking. Specifically, conversion tracking. As people opt out of tracking and as 3rd-party cookie tracking gets phased out, the ability to track conversions is becoming more difficult. 

Enter, Enhanced conversions. This new feature can help to improve the accuracy of conversions. It’s supplemental to your current conversion tracking. When implemented, it sends first-party conversion data from your website to Google The data is hashed so it is private and safe. An example of first-party conversion data would be an email address or phone number. 

Google then matches this first-party data with the data from a user who is signed in to their Google account. This is done to improve conversion accuracy and attribute campaign conversions to events such as clicking on an ad.

How Enhanced Conversions Work

1. A user who is currently signed in to their Google account clicks on your Google ad.
2. That user then goes to your website and completes a conversion (a purchase, for example).
3. The conversion tag captures some hashed first-party data such as the email address. This data is then securely sent to Google.
4. This data gets matched against Google user data and a conversion is reported in your Google Ads account.

Without being able to match this first-party data, that purchase conversion may not have been recorded in your Google Ads account. Again, this is supplemental data that Google receives, which can improve the accuracy of conversion data. 

How To Set Up Enhanced Conversions

Google has two ways to set up enhanced conversions. 

1. Global Site Tag
2. Google Tag Manager