Conversion goals
help you
organize your conversion actions so that you can more easily optimize toward
your advertising objectives.
Conversion goals are grouped by the unique combinations of
category
(for example,
PAGE_VIEW
), and
origin
(for example,
WEBSITE
) in the set of
ConversionActions
in your account's
Google Ads conversion customer
.
Goal management overview
Conversion goals are organized in a hierarchy. Customer goals define the
default goals for your entire account, while campaign goals override the
customer goals for campaigns with specific bidding and optimization
requirements.
The goal management workflow is as follows:
Create a
ConversionAction
.
When you create the conversion action, Google Ads automatically performs the
following steps:
- Creates a
CustomerConversionGoal
for the conversion action's
category
and
origin
if one doesn't already
exist.
- Creates a
CampaignConversionGoal
for each campaign and the conversion action's
category
and
origin
if
one doesn't already exist.
- Configures the
biddable
attribute of the
CustomerConversionGoal
and
CampaignConversionGoal
objects according to various rules covered later
in this guide series.
Update the
CustomerConversionGoal
objects that Google Ads created automatically
to align with your objectives. Set
biddable
to
true
to bid and optimize
towards
ConversionActions
with the goal's
category
and
origin
, and
false
otherwise. Google Ads automatically applies these updates to every
campaign where you hadn't explicitly updated campaign goals or applied
custom goals.
If you have a campaign with unique goals that differ from your customer-level
goals, configure its
CampaignConversionGoal
using one or both of the
following steps.
Use
update
operations to modify the
biddable
attribute of any
CampaignConversionGoal
objects where the goal should differ from the
customer-level goals.
If configuring the campaign's goals by
category
and
origin
doesn't
suffice, use specific conversion actions for bidding and optimization by
creating a
CustomConversionGoal
and updating the campaign's
ConversionGoalCampaignConfig
.
As a result of the
update
operations, Google Ads ensures that the
goal_config_level
of the campaign's
ConversionGoalCampaignConfig
is set
to
CAMPAIGN
and stops applying
CustomerConversionGoal
updates to the campaign's
CampaignConversionGoal
objects.
If you want to transition the campaign back to using customer-level goals,
set
goal_config_level
to
CUSTOMER
.
Google Ads modifies its
CampaignConversionGoal
to match
CustomerConversionGoal
and as long as
goal_config_level
remains set to
CUSTOMER
, applies any changes to
CustomerConversionGoal
to the campaign's
CampaignConversionGoal
. The campaign in turn stops using any
CustomConversionGoals
.
Mutate requirements
When mutating a
CustomerConversionGoal
or
CustomConversionGoal
object,
the
customer_id
of the request must match the ID of your account's
Google Ads conversion customer account
.
In contrast, when mutating a
CampaignConversionGoal
or
ConversionGoalCampaignConfig
object, the
customer_id
of the request must
match the
customer_id
of your Google Ads account's
Customer
resource.
Conversion action settings
Although goals are organized by
category
and
origin
, you can set the
primary_for_goal
attribute
of each
ConversionAction
to indicate the role it should play in bidding and
how the action's conversions will
appear in reports
.
If
primary_for_goal
is
true
:
- Google Ads includes the conversion action in bidding based on the
biddable
attribute of customer and campaign goals for the conversion action's
category
and
origin
.
- Google Ads includes the conversion action's conversions and conversion values in
Conversions
(
metrics.conversions
),
All conv.
If
primary_for_goal
is
false
:
Google Ads doesn't include the conversion action in bidding or
Conversions
unless you use the conversion action in a
CustomConversionGoal
. You can
still find the conversion action's conversions and conversion values in
All conv.
(
metrics.all_conversions
) and its related fields in reports.
Check out the
campaign goals guide in this
series
for more
details.
Conversion actions with
primary_for_goal
set to
true
appear in the Google Ads UI
as
Primary action used for bidding optimization
, otherwise they appear as
Secondary action not used for bidding optimization
.