Campaign Level Conversions in Google Ads

Google Ads is an ever-evolving platform. While that makes it a tricky one to master, there’s always a surprise in store that can help advertisers do more with their pay-per-click (PPC) ads. At the 2019 Google Marketing Live event, the company announced that they would be opening up campaign level conversions.

This change enables advertisers to set conversion actions and goals at the campaign level. You can do this now for both Search and Display campaigns, and soon enough, it will be available for Video campaigns.

So, what does it really mean for PPC advertisers?

Let’s find out.

The Importance of Conversion Tracking

Conversion tracking is a process where advertisers and marketers collect consumer data that correlates to the conversion goals and actions they have defined in their Google Ads account. By using conversion tracking, we can assess our ads to see how effective they are in driving conversions.

Through analysis, conversion tracking helps you identify underperforming areas of your campaign. You can use this knowledge to make adjustments to keywords, bids, and ad copy, which should improve the customer journey – and your conversion rates!

How Does Conversion Tracking Work in Google Ads?

When you want to use conversion tracking for your PPC campaign, you need to:

1. Define your goals in your PPC campaign.
2. Set the conversion action that tells Google Ads when your conversion goal has been met. For example, you could set it as a download if your goal is to drive downloads of your new ebook.
3. Set up a Google Analytics account.
4. Once you do that, you can paste in the Google Ads pixel from your Ads account, which will initiate tracking.

In doing this, you give the Google algorithm what it needs to understand your Ads campaign, and what you consider as a conversion. Google will record a conversion every time a user completes the desired action.

Before now, you could only set conversion goals at the account level. This led to some confusion as most accounts have more than one campaign, and with that, it’s likely each account has several conversion goals.

Now, as you can set conversion goals at the campaign level, it’s easier for Google to determine which conversion action is most important to each specific campaign in the Ads account.

Over time, as your account accrues conversion data, the Google algorithm will learn more about your campaign, your audience, and your goals. Through artificial intelligence (AI), the platform will be able to optimize your ad delivery for better results.

Life Before Campaign Level Conversions

As mentioned, conversion activity settings were previously only available at the Account level. Although you could segment by conversion type at the campaign level, the configuration options were limited. For instance, it wasn’t possible to select which conversion actions were to be optimized manually, and which were to be optimized through smart bidding.

As a result, many companies had to set up separate accounts if they wanted to optimize their PPC campaigns and budgets for separate conversion goals.

With the recent update, advertisers have greater freedom to set defined goals for each campaign in their Google Ads account.

What is the Campaign Level Conversion Setting?

Campaign level conversion setting is a new featured option in Google Ads, which makes it easier to hit your PPC campaign goals.

This user-friendly setting allows advertisers to select a specific campaign goal to be optimized and tracked. This helps the Google algorithm recognize individual campaign goals.

Thanks to the campaign level conversion setting, Google enables marketers and advertisers to specify which actions they should populate for conversion data.

As such, the new setting provides Google with more accurate and relevant information on what conversion actions should be optimized and tracked.

This means you’ll be able to tell Google what’s most important for your business and overarching goals.

A few pointers for this setting:

• Adjust your bids
• Analyze the volume of conversions for selected actions
• Test it through an experiment first
• Don’t leave everything up to the algorithm

 
You can also improve your PPC campaign results by focusing on campaign level conversions. However, it should be noted that such changes will impact your Google account performance.

With this setting, the most notable variations we’ve seen so far include:

1. Ad delivery slowdown
2. Change in CPA (cost per acquisition)

Google’s new bidding control setting can enhance your campaign effectiveness by using Smart Bidding for optimal results.

Why Has Google Introduced Campaign Level Conversion Setting?

According to research from Google, 70% of PPC advertisers use automated bidding – often through the extension option.

While smart bidding has its merits, namely in driving performance, it is not without its limitations. Many people find that it lacks the flexibility they need to achieve their goals and maximize their return on investment (ROI).

A Word on Conversion Action Sets

You may have campaigns that can drive several types of conversion action. When you have multiple conversion actions, you can create a conversion action set.

This group of defined conversion actions can be used in your campaign settings and can be shared across a group of several campaigns that all intend to drive the same actions.

Follow these steps to set up a conversion action set:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Navigate to your chosen campaign, then select Settings.
3. Under ‘Settings’, select the Conversions drop-down menu.
4. In the left-hand pane, select Conversion action sets.
5. Click the ‘+’ (plus) button to add new conversion action sets, then follow the prompts.

If you’re using smart bidding in these campaigns, Google’s AI will optimize your bidding strategies for all conversion goals in the set.

Learn More: Should You Use Google Ads Smart Bidding?

Wrap Up

So, there you have the essential knowledge of the campaign level conversion setting feature. This development is sure to change how PPC advertisers set up their campaigns and PPC goals.

Once you start using it, you’ll want to know how it impacts your performance. Check out our Campaign Performance Report to get all the insights you need.