Enhanced conversions - why you need to set this up today
As third-party cookies continue to erode and browser privacy restrictions increase, conversion tracking accuracy has been declining across most Google Ads accounts. Enhanced conversions are Google's first-party solution to this - and they work.
Standard Google Ads conversion tracking has always had gaps. Browser restrictions, ad blockers, and cross-device journeys all cause conversions to go unattributed. Enhanced conversions use hashed first-party data to fill some of those gaps - by matching the information your customers provide at conversion (email, name, address) to their Google account. The result is more complete conversion data and better-informed bidding.
Two types of enhanced conversions
Enhanced conversions for web uses the data customers submit in your forms to improve match rates. When someone converts on your site and provides their email address, that email is hashed and sent to Google, which tries to match it to a signed-in user. This improves attribution for conversions that might otherwise have been missed due to browser restrictions.
Enhanced conversions for leads uses offline conversion data - particularly useful for lead generation businesses where the actual conversion value is determined after the form submission. A form fill might be worth nothing. A form fill that becomes a £5,000 client is worth a lot. Enhanced conversions for leads lets you feed that offline data back into Google Ads so your bidding strategy knows the difference.
How to set it up
You need Google Tag Manager or the Google Ads tag on your site. In your conversion settings, you enable enhanced conversions and configure the variables that capture customer data at the point of conversion - typically the form field values for email and name. Google provides implementation guidance and a Tag Assistant tool to verify the setup. It is not trivial but it is not a week-long project either. A competent developer should have it done in a day.
What you gain
Independent tests from agencies implementing enhanced conversions typically show a 5 to 15 percent increase in measured conversions - not because conversions increased, but because more of them are being attributed correctly. For smart bidding strategies running on conversion data, that improvement in signal quality directly improves bidding decisions. Better data in means better allocation of budget out.
Privacy compliance
Enhanced conversions use hashing - the email addresses are converted to a fixed-length string before being sent to Google. The original data is not stored or readable by Google in plain text. You still need to ensure your privacy policy reflects that you share hashed customer data with advertising partners. Most modern privacy policies cover this, but check yours specifically if you are uncertain.
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