Set up your offline conversions

Google Ads Tutorial: How to Set Up Offline Conversion Tracking

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Bridging the gap between online ads and offline sales is critical for a complete understanding of campaign effectiveness. You can review your offline conversions to help determine how your ads are impacting your sales in physical stores. Learn more about conversion measurement.

This article will explain the steps you need to follow to set up your offline conversion measurements. Learn more about offline conversion imports.

Step 1: Get started with offline conversion data sources

Go to Summarywithin the Goals menu.
Select + Create conversion action.
Select Conversions offline.
Select Add data source.
Select Continue.
Select the Connect a new data source and choose the new data source you want to set up. You can choose to skip and set up a data source later.
Choose a connection source option from the following:
- Direct connection
- Third party integration by Zapier
- Partner integration
Select Connect.
- If provided, follow the instructions from the new product data source you’ve selected.
Or select Skip this step and set up a data source later in the previous step.
- Note: Your new measurement set up won’t be active until a data source is connected.
Select Done.
Select Continue.

Note: “Conversions from an offline source” will show the product and conversion source you’ve just created. If you opted to skip and set up a data source later, it will show “Data source to be connected later”. For more information, refer to Connect a data source.

Step 2: Set up an offline conversion

While you can proceed to create an offline conversion action without immediately configuring a data source, a data source connection is required for Google Ads to actually receive and record your offline conversion data. You will need to set this up later for the conversion action to function.

Part 1: Choose the conversion category you want to measure

Choose the conversion category (or categories) you want to measure. Categories help you group multiple conversions together. The category should be the most closely related to the user action you are measuring. If you don’t find exactly what you're looking for, choose the next best category to sort your conversion.

Select a category from one of the top 4 categories recommended for you or select see all to view all category options.

If you have an existing conversion(s) already grouped into that category, Google will let you know how many conversions already exist in that category.

Part 2: Define your conversion

Important: Correctly configuring your conversion actions as primary (biddable) or secondary (observation-only) is critical. Misconfiguring these settings can prevent Smart Bidding from optimizing effectively, as the algorithm relies on these signals to improve your campaign performance.

Select Skip this step and set up a data source later in the previous step.
Select a conversion category you want to measure.
- If you're given a placeholder conversion, select Set up.
- If you aren't given a placeholder, you can select + Add a conversion action, then select Offline data sources.
Choose a category, and select Set up or + Add a conversion action.
Select the fields that you’ll use in your data source and add any additional fields you want to import.
- Note: Some fields will be mapped automatically based on your data source.
If you have an event already created, you can select it, and select Done.
Select Save and continue.

Step 3: Next steps

Now that you’ve created your conversions, review the finish setting up your conversions next steps to ensure your conversions can be measured correctly.

Important: Smart Bidding strategies require a 7-14 day learning phase to collect enough data to stabilize performance. During this time, avoid making frequent changes to your budget, targets (CPA or ROAS), or conversion goals, as these adjustments will reset the learning period and delay optimization. Learn more About Smart Bidding.

View the conversion categories you have created.
Ensure that you've added an offline data source for conversion shells with no data source attached yet.
Select Agree and finish.

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