Conversion goals help you
organize your conversion actions so that you can more easily optimize toward
your advertising objectives. Goals are organized and identified by the unique
combinations of category
and
origin
in the set of
ConversionActions
in your account's
effective conversion
account.
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 will automatically perform the following steps:
- Create a
CustomerConversionGoal
for the conversion action'scategory
andorigin
if one doesn't already exist. - Create a
CampaignConversionGoal
for each campaign and the conversion action'scategory
andorigin
if one doesn't already exist. - Configure the
biddable
attribute of theCustomerConversionGoal
andCampaignConversionGoal
objects according to various rules covered later in this guide series.
- Create a
Update the
CustomerConversionGoal
objects that Google Ads created automatically to align with your objectives. Setbiddable
totrue
to bid and optimize towardsConversionActions
with the goal'scategory
andorigin
, andfalse
otherwise. Google Ads will automatically apply these updates to every campaign where you have not 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 thebiddable
attribute of anyCampaignConversionGoal
objects where the goal should differ from the customer-level goals.If configuring the campaign's goals by
category
andorigin
does not suffice, use specific conversion actions for bidding and optimization by creating aCustomConversionGoal
and updating the campaign'sConversionGoalCampaignConfig
.
As a result of the
update
operations, Google Ads will ensure that thegoal_config_level
of the campaign'sConversionGoalCampaignConfig
is set toCAMPAIGN
, and will no longer applyCustomerConversionGoal
updates to the campaign'sCampaignConversionGoal
objects.If you want to transition the campaign back to using customer-level goals, set
goal_config_level
toCUSTOMER
. Google Ads will modify itsCampaignConversionGoal
to matchCustomerConversionGoal
, and as long asgoal_config_level
remains set toCUSTOMER
, will apply any changes toCustomerConversionGoal
to the campaign'sCampaignConversionGoal
. The campaign will no longer use anyCustomConversionGoals
.
Mutate requirements
When mutating a CustomerConversionGoal
or CustomConversionGoal
object,
the customer_id
of the request must match the ID of your account's
effective conversion
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
istrue
:- Google Ads will include the conversion action in bidding
based on the
biddable
attribute of customer and campaign goals for the conversion action'scategory
andorigin
. - Google Ads will include the conversion action's conversions and conversion
values in Conversions (
metrics.conversions
), All conv. (metrics.all_conversions
), and their related fields in reports.
- Google Ads will include the conversion action in bidding
based on the
If
primary_for_goal
isfalse
:- Google Ads will not 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.
- Google Ads will not include the conversion action in bidding or Conversions
unless you use the conversion action in a