Conversions for some advertisers start online and finish offline. For example, a consumer initiates research online for a purchase, clicks on an ad, and then telephones a call center to complete the purchase. Or a consumer with a mobile phone taps a “call now” button in an ad and purchases an item over the telephone.
Search Ads 360 can gather information about online conversions using the Floodlight tag set up on your digital entities. However, if you want to provide data about the offline portion to enhance your reports, you can upload the offline conversion data manually by using the bulksheets feature.
Permissions required for uploading offline conversions using bulksheets
To upload conversions using bulksheets you need edit access to the sub-manager account in which you're uploading conversions.
If you use click IDs to attribute conversions, make sure you have edit access to the sub-manager that generated the click ID. If you specify a click ID from a sub-manager you don't have edit access to, the upload will not succeed.
Uploading offline conversions with bulksheets
To include the offline conversion, you can upload the conversion details using a bulksheet.
Here’s the general outline for using a bulksheet to upload offline conversions:
Download or upload bulksheets
- Sign in to your Search Ads 360 experience.
- Navigate to a manager account.
- From the page menu, under “Tools & settings”, click Conversions.
- Click Uploads.
- Click the plus button
to create a new upload.
Upload offline conversions using bulksheets:
- Download a Conversions events report, which contains data about existing conversions (You'll use data from the existing conversions to create new conversions.).
- Edit the downloaded bulksheet to specify the following details:
- Conversion timestamp: You can't upload conversions attributed to Google click identifier (GCLIDs) if the conversion timestamp is older than 90 days.
- Conversion value: Assign value to your conversions so you can track the total value generated by your advertising and identify high-value conversions to focus on.
- Click ID (to attribute the conversion to a specific ad click): The click ID you copied from the "advertiser's web logs", the "Visit external click ID", or the "Conversion external click" ID column of the Conversion events report.
- Learn how to Edit the downloaded bulksheet.
- After you've added your offline conversion data, upload the edited bulksheet in your Search Ads 360.
Note the following:
- Offline conversions for social and auto track engines can only be uploaded from the Search Ads 360 Conversions API.
- When you use a bulksheet to upload conversions, each upload should contain fewer than 100,000 rows. Search Ads 360 might not be able to process a conversions bulksheet with more than 100,000 rows.
- Regarding uploading historical conversions:
- Conversions attributed to keywords, ads, product groups, or visits are forced into the last-click attribution model no matter when they're uploaded, whereas those attributed to Google click IDs (GCLIDs) are forced into this attribution model after 60 days.
- You can't upload conversions attributed to GCLIDs if either of the following is true:
- The conversion timestamp is older than 90 days.
- The GCLID is older than 90 days.
- You can't edit conversions that are older than 60 days.
- You can't upload conversions where the conversion timestamp is older than 90 days.
- You can't upload conversion timestamps older than 14 days for the purposes of auction-time bidding.
- Instead of using bulksheets to manually upload conversion data, you can use the Search Ads 360 API to upload conversion data. Or if you use a supported call-tracking vendor, you can use their integration to automatically upload conversions. Learn more about uploading offline conversions.
Uploading custom Floodlight variables from bulksheets not supported
You cannot specify custom Floodlight variables for conversions that you upload from a bulksheet. To upload custom data for offline conversions, use the Search Ads 360 conversion API.Edit an existing conversion
Conversions can only be edited within 90 days of the date when they occurred. To edit an existing conversion, download the conversion in a Conversions and Visits report and change a value in any of the following columns:
- Conversion revenue (for transaction conversions only)
- Engine Account Currency: (for transaction conversions only) Changes the currency of the transaction. Specify the currency in the ISO 4217 alphabetic (3-char) format. For example, EUR for Euro.
- Conversion quantity: It is the number of items in a conversion. Format this number in millis (multiply the number of items by 1000). For example, to specify that a user subscribed to 3 newsletters in a conversion, specify 3000 for Conversion quantity.
- (Optional) Device segment: Specify the type of device on which the conversion occurred.
Search Ads 360 doesn’t support changing the following:
- The conversion timestamp.
- The conversion type.
- The keyword, ad, or visit that is attributed for the conversion.
- The Floodlight activity or activity name.
- The Conversion ID or Advertiser Conversion ID.
However, you can always remove a conversion and upload a new one with the updated date, type, or Floodlight activity.
For more details on how to upload conversions via the bulksheet, please reference this article on how to Edit your Conversion bulksheet.
Starting from an empty bulksheet
When creating a conversion, you can either edit an existing bulksheet by downloading it and updating the data in its columns or start from an empty bulksheet. Make sure that the empty bulksheet includes the following minimal columns to identify the conversion:
- Advertiser conversion ID
- Conversion timestamp
- Advertiser ID
- Conversion type
- One of the following:
- Click ID if the conversion was attributed to a visit, click, or DSA target
- Keyword ID if the conversion was attributed to a keyword (or keyword and ad)
- Product group ID if the conversion was attributed to a product group
All of the columns above need to specify the same IDs, timestamp, and type that were specified when the conversion was created.
You also need the following columns:
- Row type set to conversion
- Action set to edit
Finally, be sure to include the column with the data you want to change.
Best practices:
- Upload frequently: Upload conversions as soon as you can. Uploading conversions daily is a best practice.
- Sequential order: Make sure conversions are posted in the correct order.
- Recent conversions: Each upload should contain the most recent conversions.
- Availability timestamp: If there are no conversions for 24 hours, upload a timestamp indicating this. If conversions occurred in the last 24 hours but haven't been uploaded, use the timestamp of the last uploaded conversion.
- Efficiency: Consider automating the upload process using scripts or integrations.
By following these guidelines, you'll effectively capture and utilize offline conversion data, leading to more informed bidding decisions and improved campaign performance.
Related links
- Download a Conversion events report
- Edit the downloaded bulksheet (Bulk Conversion Upload)