Overview
A conversion is created in Google Ads from a Google Analytics key event and provides a consistent way of measuring important actions in both Google Analytics and Google Ads. A conversion helps you improve your marketing strategy by providing consistent conversion counts across platforms so you can understand and optimize your ad campaigns. Unlike key events, conversions are eligible for bidding and reporting in Google Ads.
To create a conversion, identify an key event that measures the important interaction and then in Google Ads, create a new conversion that's based on the Google Analytics key event. After you create the conversion in Google Ads, the conversion data is shared between Google Ads and Google Analytics so you're viewing the same data across platforms.
The following flow shows how to create a Google Ads conversion from a Google Analytics key event. In short, if an event is important to your business's success, you can mark the event as a key event in Analytics. Then, if the key event is important for optimizing ad campaigns and measuring their performance, create a conversion in Google Ads from the Analytics key event.
Event → Key Event → Conversion
Benefits of creating conversions
By creating Google Ads conversions based on the key events, you can:
- Report on the same conversion counts between Google Ads and Analytics
- Bid against the conversions in your ad campaigns
- Build audiences for re-marketing purposes
Select channels that can receive credit for web conversions
In the Attribution settings in Google Analytics, you can choose from the following options under Channels that can receive credit, enabling you to determine which channels can receive credit for web conversions shared between Google Analytics and Google Ads:
- Google paid channels
- Paid and organic channels
Choosing the Google paid channels attribution setting lets you see conversions from Google Ads in your Google Analytics conversion reports. If you choose Paid and organic channels, you can report on conversions from both paid and organic sources in Google Analytics, providing a broader, cross-channel view of your conversions beyond Google Ads paid channels.
Changing this setting applies going forward and to all linked Google Ads accounts. It may impact the conversions you create in Google Ads for bidding and reporting. These changes may take a few days before they're reflected in your Google Ads campaigns and reports.
- Paid and organic channels only applies to web conversions; app conversions always use Google paid channels.
- When you select Google paid channels in the Attribution settings, the “Key event lookback window” setting will only affect Google Analytics key events and not Google Analytics conversions. If an option is selected, you must go to the Google Ads conversions summary page by navigating to Goals > Conversions > Summary through Click-through conversion window or Engaged-view conversion window to change the conversion window settings for Google Analytics conversions.
- When you select Paid and organic channels in the Attribution settings, the “Key event lookback window” setting will affect both Google Analytics key events and Google Analytics conversions.
Report on conversions
The Conversion performance report in the Advertising section lets you select conversions shared with your Google Ads account and evaluate the performance of those conversions in Google Analytics. Learn more about the Conversion performance report