What are conversion goals?
Conversion actions are meaningful actions that your customers and potential customers can take and that you've defined as valuable to your business, such as an online purchase or phone call. These actions, measured with conversion tracking, are now grouped together and categorized as conversion goals.
Conversion goals are managed at the sub-manager level (for Search Ads 360 goals) and at the client level (for Google Ads goals). They are available for all campaigns in your sub-manager account, and goals you create in your sub-manager account ("account-default goals") are automatically suggested during campaign creation. You can also create campaign-level conversion goals, which provide the flexibility to optimize a particular campaign while still using your account-level bid strategy.
With conversion goals, bidding optimization is determined by the goals your campaigns bid toward. Conversion actions can be primary or secondary.
- Primary actions: These are used for bidding if the conversion goal that they're included in is used for bidding. They're also used for reporting in the "Conversions" column. For example, to use a "Purchase" conversion action for bidding when campaigns are optimizing towards the "Purchase" goal, specify that it's a primary action.
- Secondary actions: These are used for reporting in the "All conv." column, but are not used for bidding unless they are part of a custom goal.
Note: On the campaigns overview page, primary actions (and those included in custom goals) are listed in the "Conversions" column, and secondary actions are listed in the "All conv." column.
Terminology and workflow changes
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Conversion actions | Conversion actions grouped by category into conversion goals |
| Conversion action sets | Custom goals |
| Include in "Conversions" setting | Use primary conversion actions and custom goals for bidding |
| Conversion categories | Conversion categories |
Benefits of conversion goals
- Semantically meaningful grouping that helps advance optimization: Conversion actions in your account are grouped into relevant conversion goals to describe the actions that are the most meaningful for your business. For example, a "Purchase" conversion goal might contain all conversion actions (from purchasing online on selected websites to purchasing via select apps) that fall under the "Purchase" category type. This also helps unlock bidding improvements and optimization opportunities.
- Simplified conversion management: Capturing all relevant conversion actions is critical to helping you achieve your advertising objective. Account-default goals set at the sub-manager level can be applied to all campaigns in your account, saving time on managing goals for each campaign.
- Improve campaign performance (Google Ads only): Account-default goals ensure that all of your valuable conversions are being considered across all of your campaigns for your Smart Bidding strategies. This gives machine learning more data to learn from to power your bid strategies and deliver better performance. Learn more about Google Ads auction-time bidding.
Available conversion goals
Available conversion goals depend on your advertising platform and campaign bid strategy.
| Goals | Supported platforms |
|---|---|
| Search Ads 360 conversion goals |
Baidu Google Ads Microsoft Advertising Yahoo! JAPAN Ads |
| Search Ads 360 and Google Ads conversion goals | Google Ads |
| Google Ads conversion goals | Google Ads |
Conversion goal types
Account-default goals (recommended by default during campaign creation)
Account-default conversion goals are goals that are suggested for all campaigns in a sub-manager account. These are typically the most meaningful goals for your business. When you create a new campaign, all account-default goals in your account will be selected for optimization by default. Using account-default goals helps you get the most out of automation and cross-campaign learning within your account. When you create a new campaign, it will default to using your existing account-default goals. To customize an individual campaign, you can add campaign-specific goals or remove account-default goals.
If you have multiple standard conversion goals tracking different stages of the same conversion funnel, we recommend that you set only one of them as the account-default goal. For instance, if you're an e-commerce shoe retailer that wants to drive more online shoe sales, it's recommended that you set "Purchase" as the account-default goal.
Standard goals (applied at the campaign level)
You can group conversion actions into meaningful conversion goals based on their conversion category type - for example, "Purchases", "Contacts", or "Submit lead forms". These goals are called standard conversion goals. You can apply these goals at the campaign level.
Custom goals (not generally recommended)
Custom goals are goals that you can create and add any combination of primary and secondary conversion actions. For example, you can create a custom goal with a primary conversion action from the "Purchase" conversion goal and a secondary conversion action from the "Submit Lead Form" conversion goal. All conversion actions in a custom goal, including secondary conversion actions, are used for bidding optimization. You can create custom goals in your "Conversions summary" (to view the summary in Search Ads 360, click "Tools" and then under "Measurement", click "Conversions"). Note that generally, these goals are for advanced use and aren’t recommended in most cases.