Google Ads Conversion Tracking with Google Tag Manager Server-Side

Measure Like a Boss

Hi there. I'm Wynne Pirini and in today's episode I'm gonna show you how to set up the brand new google ads, tag and service ID tag manager and this will improve the reliability of data that you're uploading to google ads and in turn will improve the profitability of your ad campaigns. So the first thing that we need to do is to grab the conversion id and the conversion label for the conversion in question. So in order to do that you need to log into your google adwords account. This one that you're seeing here is a test account. And in order to get to this conversion screen here you click on tools and settings under the measurement column, you'll see conversions, click on that and then you want to set up conversion. Once you've done that, click into it and you'll be given some options. We're looking for tag set up which is this tab here, click on that, you'll see a drop down up here and then we have three options. The one that you want is use google tag Manager. I want you do that you'll see there's some information here. You got the conversion I. D. And the conversion labels. So if I just copy both of those pieces of text here and there, put them into my note pad then I can grab those in just a second. Yeah and I have two containers that run side by side for any particular project. We have google Tag Manager browser which is the old google tag manager and that runs in the browser. We also have google Tag Manager server now which is a new product that was released at the end of 2020 along with Google analytics for and they run really in Tandem. Those two products are meant to work together and I'll show you how that works right now. So the first thing we need to do is to create a couple of new tags. So if we go to the tag section and google tag manager server click on you and I'm gonna give this the name google ads, G ads conversion linker. And then from the tag configuration drop down now, see that there is a new tag called conversion linker, click on that and we want to trigger this on every page of you. All right. So you also notice that there's a new trigger called all pages. We can figure that click save. Don't worry. This is not going to fire off an event on every page but it potentially could if you wanted it to. It's all it's doing is it's making sure to listen um on every single page for you. The next step, once again click new again. This time we're going to create the actual google ads um conversion tag itself, give it a name from the tag. Conversion configuration dropped down this time, choose the new google ads, conversion tracking tag. And now you have a couple of options here to put in the conversion ID in the conversion label. Now you can uh copy and paste these directly into here if you want. It's up to you, but a better way of doing this is to create some new variables. So I'm going to go into my setup and create a new variable and we're going to I'm going to call this G ads conversion I. D. And for the variable configuration, going to click on constant and now our value goes in there so we got the wrong value there. Let's make sure it's got the right one. Yeah. Okay, save uh the same thing for the conversion label. I'm going to click on that little lego plus symbol and plus again in the top right hand corner and this time this is called she adds and it's going to be the conversion label. But I want to get a little bit further than that. Now let's say for instance that I'm tracking google ads conversions for more than one event. So for each conversion you're going to have a unique label. So it's important that you give us some kind of meaningful name. I'm gonna call this generate lead and once again I'm gonna select a constant and I'm going to give it that conversion label value here. Right save Now I have the conversion id and I have the conversion label and that's enough information for google ads to now successfully attribute the conversion to the right ad the right had set in the right campaign and because this is running through google itself, uh there's enough smarts in this system that will now take any event data that's being sent through google tag manager browser so you can see in my setup here that I have events getting sent through to the google ads pixel and it will uh look at the data that's coming through from that pixel and it will also look at the data that's coming through from uh google tag manager server now and it will understand that they're the exact same conversion event so you're not getting a double up of your conversion data. Now, a couple of things to also point out here is that you've got other possibilities. Now if you're driving an e commerce site then you can send through product sales data, you can also send through customer data through this as long as you've got the permission to do so and you've got some kind of uh privacy permission management system. We won't cover that in this particular episode but I want to point out that that capability is there and it can be set up with a little bit of manipulation. Okay. So we've got conversion linking, make sure that that's it is true. And I also want to point out that you can set up um some other uh custom metadata properties here as well. Okay, so that's enough. It's a very simple set up. Like I said, there's only really two pieces of data that we're sitting through. You can do the extra steps of setting up the variables, like I've pointed out here, which is always the best practice. It's always good to use. The variables were impossible to keep your google tag management set up a lot cleaner. Okay. So I say that but now it's asking for a trigger so there's one more piece of um data to add. And what we're gonna do here is to create a new trigger. So I'm going to call this event and once again I'm gonna be tracking a generate lead event in my system. You can track add to cart events, purchases um whatever kind events that you want to write. So in there to trigger configuration I'm gonna click on custom event here and then in the drop down I'm going to select generate a lead because that's the event that I'm going to be tracking. Okay so now I've got a trigger and that's setting up data to google kind of save that. And let's just have a quick recap on the pieces that we've put in place here. So I go to overview. So the first thing that we've done is we've grabbed the conversion I. D. And the conversion of label from google ads. We've set them up here. You can see these two new variables here. We've created a couple of new tags. Uh First of all the conversion linker that's linking up things between the browser and the service. So this is really really important that you have this in there. If you don't do this it's not going to work properly. And we've got google ads firing off the conversion ID and label to google. And lastly uh it's been it's triggering on an event stream that's coming from google ads. Google analytics for this is running in the browser and I'll show you that in a moment um and it's listening for a specific event that's being sent through. So this is my google tag manager browser set up and I have two tags, one for the basic configuration of google analytics for and one for the conversion events that are coming through. Okay so let's talk about each one briefly. So in the configuration setup we are we need to put in our google analytics for account I. D. And this will look something like the example that's given here that says G dash A B C 123 Which account has a has a unique value there but they all start with G dash when it comes to google analytics for now for universal analytics it says you a dash. So they've changed the the way that the ID strings lock. Now the second thing that you'll notice in here is something called the transport. You are uh I'm not gonna go into how to set up google uh tag Manager server in this episode, I'll probably cover that at a separate time. Um But you have what's set up what's called this transport underscore U. R. L. And that'll be the U. R. L. That you've got google tag Manager service set up on. And instead of sending the analytics data straight to google analytics for what it's telling the system is to not send it there but instead to send it through your server and that's the benefit because uh if it's sent from your server it's it's much more likely to get through to it's more likely to get through to uh google analytics floor in case uh The visitor that that's on your site has some kind of anti tracking set up. Next one is Google analytics for conversion. So I have a tag called that and now this will send the events through to google analytics for um And the specific events that I'm listening for. So I have my system configured to listen for uh events to do with lead generation. Now if you're running a shopping cart then you'll be more interested in events like add to cart checkout and purchase and the way we add an event and the system is just like on google tag manager server. Uh We had what's called a custom event and then we give it a name and the event names that I like to use. A typically standard events for google analytics for um and in this case I'm using the name generate underscore lead for this event. Okay, so once you've got all your events set up that way and you're listening for those, then your system will send those conversion events through to your server um with whatever data that you've got set up for, the event parameters. Now, most of the data that you see here is to do with facebook cappy. This episode is not about facebook happy so I'm not gonna go into any of that but the one piece of one piece of information that we're sending through that is important for this particular application is first underscore party underscore collection and this must be said the truth and why this is important is because if you don't set this up properly, it then mm the system uh the google and lyrics for tag will actually ignore some of the data and it won't get through to your google tag manager server. Right? So once you have those two tags set up that will enable the conversion linker to happily manipulate data on the browser and the server and to make sure that it measures up So hopefully that wasn't too confusing. If you have any questions about the concepts that I've covered today, please leave them in the comments box. Also, if you'd like to discuss your project, you're welcome to book a free 15 minute call with me. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please leave a like. 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