Why enhanced conversions is a must for every advertiser
In a privacy-safe world where users have more control over their data, visibility for marketers is becoming increasingly more challenging.
Cookie banners, which are becoming more uniform, are among the main drivers - resulting in two main consequences: one being the loss of conversion reporting visibility and the other being performance-related due to bidding strategies having less conversion visibility.
However, the good news is that various solutions are available that can help brands regain some of their lost data. One such solution is enhanced conversions.
What is enhanced conversions?
In short, enhanced conversions is a first-party data solution that helps advertisers recover some lost conversion data to improve the accuracy of conversion reporting and support bidding strategies for paid campaigns. It uses the first-party conversion data that a user enters into a website, hashes it, and then sends it to Google - who match this hashed data with their own hashed signed-in user data to map that user’s journey. When the match is complete, Google attributes that conversion to any previous ad touchpoints that led to it.
How do enhanced conversions work on Google?
Step 1
A Google signed-in user views an ad.
Step 2
The user then converts on the website, entering their first-party data.
Step 3
The conversion tag on the webpage captures the specified field (e.g. email address). This data is then hashed and securely sent to Google.
Google uses an irreversible one-way hashing algorithm called SHA-256 on first-party customer data.
Step 4
This hashed data is matched against Google’s hashed user data. Once this match is complete, the account will report a conversion against any ad touchpoints in the user journey before the conversion happens (using the data-driven attribution model).
Benefits and best practices to unlock its full power
Data visibility. Feeding this first-party conversion data to Google can help advertisers gain more visibility of the conversions their activity is driving. More visibility means improved integrity of the attribution, as conversions will be more accurately credited to the campaigns involved in the user journey by reducing breakages due to browser/privacy restrictions.
Performance. Enhanced conversions give campaign bidding strategies more visibility of their role in driving conversions, which can help optimise and budget efficiency.
Audience. Google Ads allows audiences to be created from the enhanced conversion data. These can then be used as a signal within smart bidding to improve targeting performance. Setting this up can reduce or negate the need for manual uploads.
Importing offline conversions. Implementing enhanced conversions unlocks enhanced conversions for leads, whereby offline conversions (e.g. a sale) resulting from online conversions (e.g. an enquiry) can be hashed and uploaded into Google Ads, allowing the complete impression-to-sale journey to be seen. This enables smart bidding to bid towards users most likely to make offline conversions rather than just an online action, e.g. bid towards sales generated from an enquiry form rather than just the enquiry form.
Advertisers who use Enhanced Conversions for Web see an average Conversion lift of 5% on search and 17% on YouTube.
Is this solution only a feature on Google?
Enhanced conversions isn’t an exclusive solution for Google Ads; it is also available on Meta, Microsoft ads, and now Google Analytics, which allows advertisers to have a more complete picture of cross-channel conversion attribution.
How can my company implement this?
There are three options when it comes to implementing Enhanced Conversions, which are:
Google Tag Manager (GTM). Companies currently using GTM for conversion tracking can set up enhanced conversions with only slight changes to the GTM configuration.
Google Tag. Companies that currently set up conversion tracking using the Google Tag directly on a webpage can set up enhanced conversions with only slight changes to the configuration.
Google Ads API. Finally, companies can provide enhanced conversion data via API, which allows them to locate first-party data from various sources.
When implementing enhanced conversions, we advise instructing a data expert to provide you with the peace of mind that the process has been completed correctly. Furthermore, instructing an expert may raise other considerations, such as reviewing the first-party data you’re currently capturing on your website and discussing additional data collection opportunities to strengthen enhanced conversions' effectiveness.
For more information about Accord’s data services, please visit our performance page or contact us today. Furthermore, to read about another solution to regain lost data, please read our recent Google Consent Mode V2 article.
Dom Dennis
Dom is Accord’s Senior Digital Planner.
