About enhanced conversions in Display & Video 360

Enhanced conversions is a feature that improves the accuracy of your conversion measurement. It supplements your existing Floodlight conversion tags by sending hashed first-party conversion data from your website to Google in a privacy-safe way.

When traditional tracking signals like third-party cookies are limited by browser restrictions, enhanced conversions help bridge the gap. The feature uses a secure, one-way hashing algorithm called SHA256 on your first-party customer data, such as email addresses, before sending it to Google. The hashed data is then matched with signed-in Google accounts to attribute your campaign conversions to ad events, such as clicks or views.

Google is committed to protecting the confidentiality and security of your data. Your data is kept confidential and secure using the same industry-leading standards Google uses to protect its own users' data. Google only reports aggregated and anonymized conversions.

Benefits

• Recover lost conversions: Measure conversions that otherwise would not have been observed due to browser restrictions and cookie limitations.
• Improve bidding optimization: Feed valuable, accurate data into conversion modeling to improve automated bidding strategies and overall campaign performance.
• Maintain user privacy: First-party customer data is securely hashed on the client side before it is ever sent to Google.

Eligibility and limitations 

In Display & Video 360, enhanced conversions are currently only available for YouTube and eligible Demand Gen line items. Hashed first-party data will only be eligible to match against signed-in Google accounts on this specific Google-owned inventory.

 

How it works

The following steps show how enhanced conversions work.

1. A signed-in Google user views or clicks your ad on YouTube or a Demand Gen property.
2. The customer later completes a conversion on your website.
3. Your Floodlight tag captures first-party customer data provided during the conversion, such as an email address, name, home address, or phone number.
4. This data is immediately hashed on the customer's browser using the industry-standard SHA256 algorithm.
5. The hashed data is securely sent to Google over an HTTPS connection.
6. Google matches the hashed data to the signed-in Google account to accurately attribute the conversion to your ad campaign.

How to implement enhanced conversions

To use enhanced conversions, you must configure your online tracking to capture and send first-party data. This method is best for tracking sales and events that happen online, like online purchases or sign-ups, where user-provided data is available on the conversion page.

You must have robust sitewide tagging implemented on your website. You will need to work with your web development team to update your tags to capture first-party data.

• If you use Google Tag Manager: You can set up enhanced conversions by creating a user provided data variable in your tag configuration. You can map this to existing data layer variables or use CSS selectors to capture data directly from the conversion page.
• If you use the Google tag (gtag.js): You will need to update your event snippet on the conversion page to include a user_data parameter that captures the hashed first-party data.

Once your tags are updated and published, your Floodlight conversions will begin securely sending hashed data to improve your measurement accuracy.