• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, February 24, 2022

Google Ads has begun rolling out Enhanced Conversions for Leads, offering an alternative to the Google Click ID-based offline conversion tracking method. The technology uses information already captured in the leads to measure the conversions.

Enhanced conversions, which are relevant for advertisers that want to track sales that occur off a website -- will only work for conversion types in which customer data is present, such as subscriptions, sign ups, and purchases, according to Google.

When a customer completes a conversion on a brand’s website, the marketers may receive first-party customer data such as an email address, name, home address, and phone number. 

Google describes the feature as using a secure one-way hashing algorithm called SHA256 on first-party customer data before sending to data “in a privacy safe way.”

Marketers can configure this from their Google Ads account rather than the CRM platform, making it easier to adopt and enabling advertisers to track their offline conversions. The data should allow Google’s systems to make better auction decisions, leading to better conversions.

The idea, Google says, is to recover conversions that otherwise would not have been measured, improve bidding optimization through better data, and keep transactions privacy safe with hashing of first-party customer data.

Enhanced conversions, introduced in May 2021, allow tags to use consented, first-party data. Now the feature is available for leads.

Google notes that marketers can upload or import conversion data into Google Ads using first-party customer data from website lead forms.

Unlike offline conversion tracking, enhanced conversions for leads does not require the modification of lead forms or customer relations management (CRM) systems to receive a Google Click ID (GCLID). Instead, it uses information that was already captured about the leads.