Floodlight uses activities, tags, and a lookback window to count conversions.
A Floodlight activity is a specific conversion you want to track, such as the completion of a purchase or a visit to a page on your site. A tag is automatically generated for each activity, and your web team installs the tag onto your site. When a visitor lands on the conversion page, the tag reports a conversion.
For example, you set up an activity to track how many customers visit a promotional page after clicking on an ad. Then you paste the activity's tag onto the page. When a customer clicks an ad and visits the page, that's one conversion.
There are two types of Floodlight activities you can create:
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Action: Count the number of times that users have visited a particular webpage after seeing or clicking on one of your ads. These are called Counter activities in Campaign Manager 360. For example, if you create a Counter activity in Campaign Manager 360 and name it "Newsletter signups", when you sign into the associated advertiser in Search Ads 360, you'll see the "Newsletter signups" activity listed as an Action activity in Search Ads 360.
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Transaction: Track the number of sales made or the number of items purchased. You can also capture the total value of each sale. With a few extra steps, you can also set up transaction tags to report revenue, cost, and profit for individual products in an inventory feed.
These are called Sales activities in Campaign Manager 360. For example, if you create a Sales activity in Campaign Manager 360 and name it "Checkout", when you sign into the associated advertiser in Search Ads 360, you'll see the "Checkout" activity listed as a Sales activity in Search Ads 360.
You can track both visits and sales data on the same page or app by setting up two different Floodlight activities.
See an example Floodlight tag and activity"Thank you" page on a web site
Here's a typical page on a web site that acknowledges a purchase.
Floodlight tag on the “Thank you" page
Here's a Floodlight tag on the thank-you page that records transactions on the site:
<iframe height="0" width="0" src="//0.fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=0;type=fake_tag;cat=fake_tag;u=4771963;qty=1;cost=129.97;ord=4771963;~oref=http%3A//mysite.com/checkout?" style="display: none; visibility: hidden;"></iframe>
When the page loads, the tag sends its unique ID to Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360, along with the total revenue from the sale and other data. Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360 use the ID to associate the transaction with a specific Floodlight activity.
"Thank you page" Floodlight activity in Search Ads 360
When a Floodlight tag sends data to Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360, a Floodlight activity stores the data. In Search Ads 360, you can see the number of conversions that occurred for each Floodlight activity by segmenting a report. For Floodlight activities that record transactions, you can also see the total revenue from each activity.
The following example of a segmented report shows the number of transactions and the amount of revenue recorded by the Floodlight tag on the "Thank you page" and reported by the corresponding "Thank you page" Floodlight activity. Note that ads from two different ad groups are attributed credit for generating the revenue. (The Cost column records the advertising cost incurred by customers clicking ads served from each ad group.)
| Ad group | Floodlight activity group | Floodlight activity | Trans | Cost | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T-shirts | Sales Confirmation | Thank you page | 613 | 308.79 | $1,115.00 |
| Shoes | Sales Confirmation | Thank you page | 393 | 150.33 | $985.72 |
Lookback window
Floodlight only records conversions for customers who have clicked an ad within a period of time that you specify, called a lookback window. For example, if a user clicks one of your ads, then visits your Floodlight-enabled website 15 days later, but your lookback window for clicks is only 10 days, no activity is recorded.
You set up lookback windows in your Campaign Manager 360 advertiser.
Scaled conversion metrics
Search Ads 360 may be unable to directly measure Floodlight conversions and imported Google Analytics goals and transactions when website cookies that store information about your ad clicks aren't available. This may be due to factors such as browser settings or application settings, even if you use one of Google's sitewide tagging solutions. In these cases, Search Ads 360 uses machine learning and historical data to model the number of conversions and amount of conversion revenue that cannot be directly measured. Reports and bid strategies in Search Ads 360 use the resulting estimate to scale conversion metrics and provide a more complete picture of how your advertising drives conversions.
We only scale conversion metrics when there’s enough data to meet accuracy thresholds. In addition, the scaling calculation runs through our quality systems, such as our conversion spam filter, before appearing in reports or being used by bid strategies.
Reporting discrepancies
When we scale conversion metrics to account for conversions that cannot be measured due to factors such as browser settings, the result is often a fractional number.
To make Search Ads 360 reporting easier to understand, we round these fractions in some locations within the UI, in executive reports, in downloaded reports, and in the reporting API. This rounding can cause discrepancies between reporting columns, data cards, and other places in reports, depending on how each part of the report rounds and sums the fractional data.
Here are some examples of discrepancies due to rounding:
- Conversion totals in the UI compared with totals in downloaded reports
- Conversion totals compared with calculated metrics such as "Cost per action" or formula columns
- Conversion totals in unsegmented reports compared with segmented reports
- Conversion totals on different tabs, such as the Campaigns tab compared with the Ad groups tab
- Conversion totals in the performance summary graph compared with totals in the reporting table.
You may also see conversion amounts change if you change metrics in the performance summary graph. For example, if the graph currently shows Clicks and you change this metric to Actions, Search Ads 360 recalculates the number of actions. Rounding during this recalculation may cause the number of actions to change. - In executive reports, charts or tables that segment by month may show different totals from charts or tables that are not segmented
Bid strategies
Bid strategies are not impacted by rounding discrepancies because they use the raw fractional numbers that result from applying statistical modeling to conversion data.
Discrepancies with other conversion tracking systems
When you report on conversions tracked by Floodlight, Google Ads conversion tracking, and Google Analytics, the totals from these different systems might not match. Some discrepancies are expected because of differences in supported ad types, how each system counts unattributed conversions, how the different systems attribute conversions to days, and more. Learn more about differences in conversion tracking systems.
Search Ads 360 reports paid search conversions only
Once you place a Floodlight tag on your site, the corresponding Floodlight activity will begin recording conversions that include a paid search click, an impression or click on a display ad managed by Search Ads 360, or a Rich Media event.
However, Search Ads 360 only reports conversions that are attributed to clicks on paid search ads. To view conversions attributed to display ads, view-through conversions (not available for search ads), as well as paid search ads, pull reports from Campaign Manager 360 (only available if your agency or organization uses Campaign Manager 360, and if your account has been granted access to Campaign Manager 360).
Tracking parameters for measuring Floodlight conversions
When customers click your ads, two parameters are appended to your landing page URLs: gclid and gclsrc. To measure Floodlight conversions, Search Ads 360 requires these parameters to be passed to a page on your site that contains a Google tag or a conversion linker tag placed by Google Tag Manager. If your site removes these parameters or changes the values before your customer lands on a page that contains one of these tags, Search Ads 360 cannot attribute Floodlight conversions to your ads.