Google Ads Conversions

Datafly Signal delivers offline and enhanced conversions to Google Ads server-to-server via the Google Ads API (ConversionUploadService). This replaces client-side conversion tags with direct server uploads, improving measurement accuracy and enabling conversion-based bidding optimisation without relying on browser-side scripts.

Why route Google Ads through Datafly Signal

• Conversions survive ad blockers and tracking prevention. A browser tag served from an advertising domain is blocked outright for part of your traffic, and Safari’s ITP shortens the cookies it can set. Signal sends the event from your own server, so the conversions Google Ads optimises against are not filtered by the browser.
• Email, phone number, first name and last name are hashed before leaving your infrastructure. Signal normalises (trim and lowercase) and applies SHA-256 inside your own deployment, so Google Ads receives match keys rather than raw personal data.
• Click identifiers are captured and replayed. Signal stores gbraid, gclid, wbraid first-party at collection time and attaches them to the conversion later, so attribution survives even when the original landing cookie has expired.
• Delivery is batched, rate-limited, and retried. Signal buffers to Kafka, respects the Google Ads rate limit, and retries on 429 or transient failure rather than dropping the event.
• Token lifecycle is handled for you. Signal obtains and refreshes the OAuth credentials Google Ads requires, so nothing expires quietly in the middle of a campaign.
• Presets for Retail, B2B / SaaS and Automotive. The mapping starts from a working configuration for your vertical instead of a blank field map.
• One consent decision governs every destination. Google Ads is gated by the same consent state as the rest of your stack, so a withdrawal applies everywhere at once.
• No vendor tag on the page. Removing it removes its page weight and its independent access to your visitors.

Prerequisites

Setting up Google Ads for server-side conversion tracking requires a Google Ads account, a conversion action, OAuth2 credentials, and (optionally) Enhanced Conversions enabled. Follow each step below before configuring the integration in Signal.

Configuration

Configure in Signal

Management UI Setup

1. Go to Integrations > Add Integration > Google Ads Conversions and choose a preset.
2. Enter your Customer ID (digits only, no dashes) and Conversion Action ID.
3. Enter the OAuth Client ID, Client Secret and Refresh Token, and the Developer Token.
4. Select consent categories (typically advertising).
5. Click Save.

Management API Setup

curl -X POST http://localhost:8084/v1/admin/integration-catalog/google_ads/install \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Google Ads - Purchases",
    "preset": "ecommerce",
    "config": {
      "customer_id": "1234567890",
      "conversion_action_id": "987654321",
      "developer_token": "YOUR_DEVELOPER_TOKEN",
      "client_id": "123456789-abcdefg.apps.googleusercontent.com",
      "client_secret": "GOCSPX-abcdefghijklmnop",
      "refresh_token": "1//0abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
    }
  }'

Presets

One integration uploads to one conversion action (conversion_action_id). To report leads and sales to different conversion actions, add one integration per conversion action and keep the events each should send (see Multiple conversion actions).

Identity signals

Google accepts only email and phone as user identifiers on click conversion uploads, so names and addresses are not sent. Google only matches on these values, so they are never sent in plain text. See Personal data by integration.

API endpoint

POST https://googleads.googleapis.com/v17/customers/{{customer_id}}:uploadClickConversions

Allow egress to googleads.googleapis.com from the network your delivery workers run on.

Presets and event mapping

Every conversion carries conversion_action (customers/<customer_id>/conversionActions/<conversion_action_id>, from the integration settings), conversion_date_time (yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss+00:00), one click ID, the hashed user identifiers and consent.ad_user_data. order_id is transaction_id, else the legacy order_id; on automotive leads it is the event’s own ID, because Google deduplicates conversions on it and a vehicle or dealer ID would merge different people’s test drives into one. conversion_value is value (including tax and shipping, as the event specs define it), else the legacy revenue; currency_code is upper-cased. The event names in the tables are the Google Ads conversion categories the preset is written for; they are not sent.

Retail preset (ecommerce)

Purchases (order ID, value and currency), add-to-cart and checkout conversions with enhanced conversions data.

B2B / SaaS preset (saas)

Sign-up, lead and paid-subscription conversions with enhanced conversions.

Automotive preset (automotive)

Vehicle marketing conversions: finance quotes and trade-in valuations, test drives and service bookings, dealer enquiries and brochure downloads; order_id is the event’s own ID (Google’s per-conversion dedup key), never the vehicle or dealer ID.

Insurance preset (insurance)

Policy sales as a Google Ads offline click conversion (Bennetts): purchase and policy_purchased with the policy number as order_id, the premium as conversion_value and the currency, sent only for a click (gclid, else gbraid, else wbraid) with email and phone as normalised SHA-256 hashes. One integration uploads to one conversion action: send quote leads through a second Google Ads integration with its own conversion action (lead_gen events).

Example: purchase

A Retail purchase from a known visitor after a Google Ads click (the request body; developer-token and the OAuth access token travel as headers):

{
  "conversions": [
    {
      "consent": {
        "ad_user_data": "GRANTED"
      },
      "conversion_action": "customers/SNT-cfg-customer_id/conversionActions/SNT-cfg-conversion_action_id",
      "conversion_date_time": "2026-09-23 09:30:00+00:00",
      "conversion_value": 49995,
      "currency_code": "GBP",
      "gclid": "g-123",
      "order_id": "ORD-10042",
      "user_identifiers": [
        {
          "hashed_email": "86e0b9e56c17cc4d12387e1949b85053fbe73bc3ce5a1188713a9d300cc6133d",
          "hashed_phone_number": "a8acc3a90a7b4e4dc65e93db9240ed26523050ef754d63b75b5161de76781436"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Multiple conversion actions

Add one Google Ads integration per conversion action, each with its own conversion_action_id, and keep only the events that belong to that action in the installed blueprint (for example, one integration for purchase and one for generate_lead).

Enhanced Conversions

Enhanced conversions add the hashed email and phone to the click conversion so Google can match it to a signed-in user when the click ID alone is not enough. Call datafly.identify() when a visitor gives you their details:

datafly.identify("user-123", { email: "jane@example.com", phone: "+44 20 7946 0000" });
datafly.track("purchase", { transaction_id: "ORD-001", value: 89.99, currency: "GBP", items: [...] });

Signal trims and lower-cases the email, shapes the phone to E.164 and hashes both with SHA-256 inside your deployment before the upload.

Consent Mode

Google asks for the visitor’s consent to use their data for advertising on every click conversion from the EEA and UK. Signal sends consent.ad_user_data: GRANTED when the visitor’s canonical marketing consent is granted, DENIED when it is refused. ad_personalization is not sent: Google accepts it only on customer match and store sales uploads, not on click conversions.

Testing

After configuring the integration, verify that conversions are arriving in Google Ads:

1. Trigger a test conversion on your site (e.g. complete a test purchase or submit a lead form).
2. In Google Ads, navigate to Tools & Settings > Measurement > Conversions.
3. Click on your conversion action.
4. Check the Diagnostics tab — recent uploads should appear within a few hours.
5. Conversion source should display as “Uploaded (from API)” or “Website (Enhanced conversions from API)”.
6. In the All conversions column, you should see the uploaded conversion count increase.

To validate in the Management UI:

1. Go to Integrations and select your Google Ads integration.
2. Check the Delivery Log for recent events.
3. A 200 response code with partial_failure_error as empty confirms successful delivery.

Troubleshooting

Rate Limits

Google Ads API has per-account rate limits that vary by account tier. The defaults above are conservative. If you have a high-volume account with elevated API quotas, you can increase these values in the integration’s advanced settings.