Enhanced conversions: Measure ad performance while protecting people’s privacy

What is enhanced conversions?

When someone completes an online transaction or other valuable action, they often agree to share personal data such as their name, address, email, and phone number.

Enhanced conversions is a Google Ads feature that uses hashed first-party data to connect a purchase to an earlier ad engagement on Search or YouTube. It allows you to see the impact of your online advertising while protecting the privacy of the user who took that action.

For example, imagine you are a marketer for a department store. A user signed in to their Google account is browsing smart speakers on their phone and clicks your YouTube ad for one they like. They visit your website but do not make a purchase immediately.

Later, at home on their laptop and still signed into Google, they decide to buy the product from your website. Privacy changes mean you can’t measure that conversion as you would have in the past.

Instead, enhanced conversions steps in and hashes the data to protect the user’s privacy, while crucially still allowing you to see a conversion that has taken place as a result of your advertising.

Without enhanced conversions, you may not have been able to link that sale back to your ad, and your measurement would have been less accurate.

Why is enhanced conversions important for performance?

Conversion data is crucial for understanding how people interact with your ads and the return on investment (ROI) they deliver. However, when third-party cookies are no longer an option, it limits your ability to see and measure conversions effectively.

Enhanced conversions in Google Ads can bridge this gap by:

• Providing insights into customer behaviours and journeys across devices, browsers, and email addresses, even in a privacy-first environment.
• Improving data quality fed into your Smart Bidding campaigns, allowing Google AI to tailor your bids more effectively and maximise value.

Early adopters of enhanced conversions have seen substantial benefits, including a median conversion rate increase of 5% on Search and 17% on YouTube. These gains are all achieved while maintaining customer trust.

It’s important to note that this feature relies on users being logged into their Google accounts, which enables the secure and private matching of data.

Who can benefit from enhanced conversions?

Enhanced conversions are a valuable tool for any advertiser who collects first-party customer data, regardless of their industry or business model. This data can be collected at any stage in the customer journey.

For example, an online retailer might collect a customer’s name, address, and phone number during checkout. An insurance company advertising its solutions might collect leads through contact forms filled out by interested users, who are then contacted via phone or email to complete the sales process.

Enhanced conversions can be implemented in different ways, depending on your technical setup and preferences. The automatic setup is the quickest and easiest option, while the manual and API methods offer more customisation for advanced users. If you’re wondering how to set up enhanced conversions in Google Ads, this can be done via Google tag management in your Google Ads account or via the global site tag, depending on which you currently use for conversion tracking.

The privacy landscape is evolving, and advertisers need new ways to accurately measure their campaign performance and inform their bid strategies without relying on third-party data. By embracing enhanced conversions, you can gain valuable insights into your customers’ behaviours and increasingly complex purchase journeys while respecting their privacy, ultimately leading to more effective and successful advertising campaigns.