Google Ads Integration Guide

After you have created your wecantrack account, connected your affiliate networks and websites our system will be able to track your traffic data and attribute your conversion data to it. This enables us to push your conversion data to other tools such as Google Ads.

There are two different approaches you can use to integrate your conversion data in Google Ads, either via our Google Analytics integration or via our direct Google Ads integration feature.

Direct Google Ads Integration

The direct Google Ads integration is done via the Google Ads universal site tag. You will simply need to create a new conversion action and provide us with the tag ID and label. You do not necessarily need to place that tag on your website, it will also work if you don’t.

Requirements

Direct Google Ads Integration step by step guide

  • Within Google Ads, go to Tools & Settings > Conversions > Conversion Actions
  • Click on the plus symbol to create a new conversion action
  • Select ‘Website’
  • Scan your website for possible conversion actions to add
  • Scroll down and select the option “Add a conversion action manually”
  • Select a conversion category, we recommend to use ‘Purchase’
  • Within the ‘Conversion action optimization options’ you can select whether the conversion should be considered a primary action (incldude in Conversions) or secondary action (exclude in Converisons)
  • If you already track affiliate sale conversions for example via Google Analytics within Google Ads, make sure that only one of these conversion actions is used as primary action since else they will lead to duplicates within the Conversion and Conv. Value columns
  • Give the conversion action a name, for example ‘Sale Conversion’
  • Select ‘Use different values for each conversion’ and set default value to 0
  • For conversion count select ‘Every’
  • Select a click through conversion window, consider the cookie duration of your offer (often 30 days), make sure the conversion window is at least or higher than that
  • Select ‘Last click’ as attribution model
    • In case you select a different attribution model the data will not be in line with the numbers in WCT, GA and affiliate networks.
  • Select that you will install the tag yourself
  • You will be provided a Global Site Tag which you can place on your website. It is not required to place this tag on your website for our conversion integration feature, so you can just ignore it.
  • Scroll down to the Event Snippet section, here you will find your Google Ads Global Site Tag Snippet ID next to ‘send_to’:
  • Copy this ID (including the “AW”)
  • Within the wecantrack interface, go to the website form of the relevant website (Data Sources > Websites > Edit button of the website) you have added to wecantrack and add the copied Google Ads Global Site Tag Event Snippet ID, referred to as ‘Google Ads Tag ID & Label’
  • Go to Features and activate the ‘Direct Google Ads Integration’ feature.
Activate Feature

That’s it!

From now on your affiliate conversions coming from Google Ads campaigns will be integrated in Google Ads. The attribution time of Google Ads usually takes between 1 and 4 hours. It is quite faster than integrating conversions via the Google Analytics connection.

Direct Google Ads Integration Video Guide

Google Ads Integration via Google Analytics

Once you have set up the Google Analytics Integration feature you will be able to import the ecommerce transaction goal as a conversion action in Google Ads, so that Google Analytics will automatically pass on relevant conversions to your Google Ads account.

Requirements

Google Ads Integration via Google Analytics step by step guide

  • First you will need to link your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts
  • Go to your Google Ads account and navigate to Tools & Settings > Setup > Linked Accounts.
  • Click on ‘Details’ in the Google Analytics element
  • Click on ‘Details’ in the Google Analytics element
  • If you need more information about linking your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts, please follow this link: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1704341
  • Now that your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked you can continue with adding the transaction conversion action.
  • Navigate to Tools & Settings > Measurement > Conversions
  • Click on the plus icon to add a new conversion action
  • Click on ‘Import’
  • Select Google Analytics and click on ‘Continue’
  • Select Transactions and click on ‘Import and Continue’
  • Click on ‘Done’
  • In the conversion actions table, click on the transactions conversion action to see the setup
  • Adjust the settings to your preference
  • For example: Select ‘Last click’ as attribution model
    • In case you select a different attribution model the data will not be in line with the numbers in WCT, GA and affiliate networks.
  • Within the ‘Conversion action optimization options’ you can select whether the conversion should be considered a primary action (incldude in Conversions) or secondary action (exclude in Converisons)
  • If you already track affiliate sale conversions for example via Google Ads tag, make sure that only one of these conversion actions is used as primary action since else they will lead to duplicates within the Conversion and Conv. Value columns
  •  

Now your Google Analytics Ecommerce conversions should automatically be integrated in Google Ads. It takes up to a whole day for a conversion to be integrated in Google Ads, so don’t expect to see the conversions right away.

Google Ads Tracking Template

In case you want to see the performance of your campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords within our dashboard, you can add a tracking template in your Google Ads account. This tracking template will then automatically place UTM parameters in the landing page URLs which can then be picked up by our system.

You can adjust the Tracking Template on account level under Settings > Account Settings > Tracking

Here is an example of a Tracking Template you could use.

				
					{lpurl}?utm_source=google&utm_medium={ifsearch:cpc}{ifcontent:display}&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_term={keyword}&utm_content={campaignid}-{adgroupid}-{creative}&gclid={gclid}

How to track direct linking Google Ads campaigns?

If you are are placing your affiliate URLs as tracking templates in your Google Ads campaigns we can also help you to integrate their conversions in Google Ads. In order to accomplish that you will need to create a Google Ads Tag & Label just like we explained in the Direct Google Ads Integration chapter.

Make sure to include the GCLID variable in a subid parameter of the affiliate URL in the following way:

				
					https://affiliateurl.com/?abc=xyz&subid=gclid({gclid})

This way our system will be able to determine that there is a GCLID which it will then push together with the transaction information to the Tag ID provided on account level.

Frequently Asked Questions

No, you shall not place the Google Ads conversion tag on you affiliate website or page. If you do so it will register every page visit as conversion. We will fire conversion events to Google Ads on server side, hence you will not need to place the tag anywhere.
You can ignore the Google Ads tag status, it is insignificant for the server side integration process from our system. The tag status states ‘inactive’ or ‘unverified’ when no data has been received yet.
The iOS 14.5 update has no impact on the conversion integration regarding Google Ads search campaigns. The only impact will be on display and video ads which are placed within mobile apps (such as the YouTube app). When iOS users opt out from tracking, WBRAIDs will be used instead of GCLIDs. Within the direct Google Ads integration we will still integrate data via the WBRAID parameter, but the attribution process within Google Ads can take around 2 days.
In order to see campaign related data in the wecantrack dashboard you need to add a tracking template in your Google Ads account or within your ads. You can for example use the tracking template we have placed on this page.
While wecantrack integrates conversion data within a couple of minutes, the attribution within Google Ads takes a couple of hours. This differs between different integration methods. Direct Google Ads Integration: Around 3 hours (usually quicker), unless it’s transactions coming from iOS 14.5 through YouTube Ads, then the integration can take up to 2 days. Integration via Google Analytics: Around 6 hours
Google Ads attributes the conversion data to the click data and thus to click dates. Because of that, their standard ‘Conversion’ and ‘Conv. Value’ columns report the conversions on the dates when the clicks occurred that led to these. Google Ads also has fields that report conversion data based on order dates, these are called Conversion (by conv. time) and Conv. Value (by conv. time). These column values will be more in line with the numbers in Google Analytics and the wecantrack dashboard. In the following article from Google you can read more regarding Google Ads conversion attribution: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2679221?hl=en
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