TPE #121: The 2025 guide to Google Ads Conversion Tracking

Read time: 6 minutes

GM, Miles here with The PPC Edge.

In 2024, Google Ads conversion tracking became a huge mess:

• More people are using ad blockers.
• Google announced to kill third-party cookies, but then didn’t.
• Privacy regulations + lack of user consent lead to gaps in conversion data (remember the whole Consent Mode thing?!).

 

As a community, we worked hard to navigate the changing world…

But we expect that the tracking issues are only gonna get worse in 2025:

• More privacy regulations and laws worldwide.
• Browsers will continue to block cookies.
• More users become privacy-aware and reject tracking consent.

The current landscape causes a huge problem:

Without proper conversion tracking, you will never get your desired results. It’s the absolute foundation for Google Ads success.

 

That’s why we created the ‘PPC Mastery Measurement Maturity Framework’.

It shows you the best practices you need to future-proof your Google Ads tracking, and measure more high-quality conversions.

We recently updated the framework. Use it as your blueprint to track as many conversions as possible this year.

I wish I had something like this when I started my career (although the state of tracking was much different back then).

Let’s dive in, shall we?

 

Track more high-quality conversions with our updated Measurement Maturity Framework.

Our updated Measurement Maturity Framework contains 3 sections:

1. Start with a solid foundation.
2. Enhance your dataset with advanced features.
3. Correct your dataset for more accuracy.

Tracking conversions with Google Ads becomes technical very fast. To prevent overwhelm, we’ll dive into the foundation today, as well as the most important advanced features to enhance your dataset.

 

 

Section 1: Start with a solid foundation.

The first section of the updated Measurement Maturity Framework helps you lay the foundation for success.

How you set this up can truly make or break your conversion tracking.

If you implement the 3 tracking techniques we have for you in this section, you will already be ahead of 90% of your competitors.

 

1.1: Implement Server-Side Tagging.

We believe Server-Side Tagging (SST) is no longer optional — it’s a must in nearly every account (except maybe the really small ones):

• It prevents data loss due to client-side issues such as ad-blockers, cookie restrictions, or browser limitations and increases accuracy.
• It leads to faster page load times and improved UX, because the processing load is shifted from the user's device to your server.

 

We won’t dive into the nitty-gritty details of SST in this newsletter.

Just understand that your server directly communicates with third-party platforms, such as Google Ads, using server-to-server connections.

Server-Side Tagging typically collects data in first-party context, which is a great way to future-proof your tracking setup.

With SST, we’ve seen conversion uplifts between 10-30%!

We use Taggrs to help us set up SST with ease. Get it for free for 1 month here.

 

 

1.2: Implement the Google Ads Conversion Pixel (Tag) for all website conversions.

You can’t rely on GA4 data and must therefore use the Google Ads Conversion Pixel (Tag) to:

• Measure more conversions and data points.
• Improve attribution with cross-device and view-through conversions.
• Use additional advanced data enhancement features (see section 2).
• Optimally integrate Offline Conversion Tracking.

It’s best to import GA4 conversions for observation and back-up purposes. We highly recommend you to use Google Ads Conversion Tracking (or Offline Conversion Tracking, see section 1.3) for all your tracking needs.

If you combine Server-Side Tagging with Google Ads Conversion Tracking, you will receive more conversion data and insights!

 

1.3: Implement Offline Conversion Tracking for all offsite conversions (Lead Gen).

Offline Conversion Tracking is an absolute must for Lead Gen advertisers. It helps you:

• Track the real impact of your Google Ads campaigns on offline sales.
• Optimize toward more profound lead-to-sale events and increase your bottom-line results.

 

How it works:

• Customer data is matched with online identifiers (e.g., GCLID, GBRAID, WBRAID, email) to link offline conversions with your ads.
• Google Ads uses this data to attribute offline conversions to specific in-platform dimensions, like campaigns and keywords.

With Offline Conversion Tracking, you unlock extremely valuable data points about your closed deals, cost per closed deal, lead-to-closed dea ratio, and ultimately (gross) profit.

 

 

Added benefit: you can use the real conversion values from closed deals to optimize for high-value leads/customers with Value-Based Bidding (VBB).

The most common way to set up Offline Conversion Tracking is with Zapier. For advanced and high-volume accounts, the Google Ads API might be the best solution.

 

Section 2: Enhance your dataset with advanced features.

At this point, you’ve laid the foundation for success with Server-Side Tagging, Google Ads Conversion Tracking, and Offline Conversion Tracking (Lead Gen).

Now it’s time to go beyond the foundation and enhance our dataset with advanced features.

Let’s look at the most important advanced tracking techniques to measure more high-quality data than your competitors (these will really take your skills and performance to the next level):

• Enhanced Conversions.
• Consent Mode.
• Profit tracking.

 

2.1: Implement Enhanced Conversion to improve attribution.

Enhanced Conversions supplements your existing conversion tags by sending over hashed first party conversion data, such as an email.

This enables Google Ads to match and attribute that data to logged-in Google users who viewed or clicked on ads through for example another device when a cookie was deleted.

 

In other words:

• You will recover conversions that otherwise wouldn’t have been measured.
• You will improve bidding optimization through better data and attribution.

Rachel Williams, member of The PPC Hub recently saw a 10% increase in measured conversions on the Search network when she implemented Enhanced Conversions.

That’s massive!

 

 

Long story short: implement Enhanced Conversions to recover conversions that would otherwise have been lost!

Google recently updated the diagnostics, which shows a great overview of the additionally reported conversions thanks to Enhanced Conversions!

 

 

2.2: Implement Google Consent Mode (V2) and fill in the gaps with Conversion Modelling.

Google Consent Mode V2 was the talk of the town last year (because it was mandatory to set up before March 2024 if you had end-users in the EEA region).

The panic has settled down and we have gotten used to enabling Consent Mode by default in the EU.

But privacy regulations aren’t the only reason you need Consent Mode.

We recommend everyone to use Consent Mode so you can leverage the benefits of Conversion Modelling (which helps you recover lost conversions from people who rejected tracking consent).

Still not convinced? 40% rejects cookies on our own website lolz (Consent Mode recovers a percentage of those users).

 

 

Here’s how Google Consent Mode works:

• Consent Mode automatically adjusts how your tags behave based on the cookie consent status of your users.
• Using consent signals, Google uses Conversion Modeling to recover lost conversions from users who didn’t consent to ads cookies.
• When consent is granted, tags will function normally. When consent is denied, associated tags will adjust their behavior accordingly.
• Conversion Modeling can help fill in blanks at times when it’s not possible to observe the path between ad interactions and conversions.

 

Meaning: Consent Mode gives you additional conversions that you would otherwise not have measured.

Quick note on Conversion Modelling: you can’t segment observed and modeled conversions inside of Google Ads. So you will have to trust Google…

But, on average, we see an uplift of 5% in measured conversions (this used to be visible, but we haven’t seen it in a long time — some say it’s only available in the first 30 days… Not sure!).

Stack this on top of the +/- 10% uplift from Enhanced Conversions, and you have a lot of extra data to work with!

 

 

2.3: Implement Profit Tracking to measure and/or optimize for profit (Ecommerce).

Most advertisers only track revenue and use Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) to analyze and improve campaigns.

The problem: these metrics don’t tell you anything about your profitability.

Google will push the products that are most likely to get conversions and won’t look at profit margins. You might be getting a lot of conversions and revenue, but that doesn’t mean you’re profitable.

The solution: implement profit tracking and enable Profit On Ad Spend (POAS).

(The easiest way to set up profit tracking is with a tool called ProfitMetrics.io.)

 

These are the benefits:

• See gross profit data in Google Ads.
• Stop unprofitable ads and scale hidden winners.
• Increase Profit on Ad Spend and know exactly how much profit you make.
• Deliver better input to let Google improve campaign performance (profit).

 

 

Implement this framework and you will be 10 steps ahead of your competition!

Again: we haven’t covered the entire framework in this issue because I don’t want to overwhelm you.

If you want to take your conversion tracking and data input to the next level, you can also implement the following advanced features:

• Conversions with Cart Data (understand what people buy).
• New Customer Data to segment new vs. returning customers.
• Transaction IDs to avoid duplicate conversions.
• Custom Variables to gain business-specific insights.

 

And you can correct your dataset with:

• Conversion Adjustments to remove or change conversion data.
• Data Exclusions to clean up your conversion data.

 

But… The most important things is that you first start with a solid foundation:

• Server-Side Tagging.
• Track conversions with the Google Ads conversion pixel (GACT).
• Implement Offline Conversion Tracking for offsite conversions (Lead Gen).

 

And then enhance your dataset with:

• Enhanced Conversions and Consent Mode to fill in the gaps.
• Profit Tracking to measure and/or optimize for profit (Ecommerce).

 

Investing in a solid, advanced conversion tracking setup is no longer optional.

You MUST future-proof your conversion tracking and dataset in order to survive in the current PPC landscape.

Follow our Measurement Maturity Framework, and you will be 10 steps ahead of your competition.

Remember: crystal-clear conversion tracking is the absolute foundation for success with Google Ads.

So make sure you invest time and effort in setting everything up optimally.

 

Next step: need help implementing?

Most of these tracking techniques are technical and difficult to set up and we’d love to help you out.

We created a complete course (Conversion Tracking Mastery) on how to set up your Google Ads conversion tracking setup so you can:

• Track as much as possible (has a huge impact on the algorithm).
• Measure more high-quality conversions and real business results.
• Set up everything with ease (with over-the-shoulder implementation videos).

If that sounds interesting, consider joining The PPC Hub. Inside, you’ll unlock instant access to Conversion Tracking Mastery and lots of other program that will take your Google Ads skills and results to the next level.

 

And that’s all for today — hope it was helpful.

See you next week!

Cheers,

Miles (& Bob)