Flight log / Transmission 046

Enhanced conversions: setup, leads and what actually changes

Enhanced conversions won't create a single new lead. They find the ones your tag already lost, and Google says it takes about 30 days before you can see the impact in reporting.

Conversion tags lose people. Someone clicks an ad on their phone, comes back on a laptop a week later and fills out the demo form, and the conversion never connects to the click. Enhanced conversions are Google's fix: send a hashed version of the data the visitor gave you, and let Google match it.

This guide covers the two flavors, how to set them up, how the hashing works, what changed in 2026, the consent rules, and what you should actually expect to see in your reports.

What are enhanced conversions?

Enhanced conversions add first-party data to your conversion measurement. When someone converts, the tag (or an upload) sends customer data such as an "email address, name, home address, and/or phone number," hashed with SHA-256. Google matches those hashes against signed-in Google accounts that engaged with your ads, and credits the conversion to the right campaign. Google's Help Center says it will "only report privacy-safe conversions."

Google pitches two benefits: more accurate conversion measurement and "more powerful bidding." The second follows from the first. Smart Bidding can only learn from conversions it can see, so recovered conversions are recovered training data.

What is the difference between enhanced conversions for web and for leads?

Same matching idea, different job. Web is for conversions that happen on your site. Leads is for outcomes that happen later, in your CRM, after someone submitted a form.

Google describes enhanced conversions for leads as "an upgraded version of offline conversion import." It also says the leads version "enables engaged-view conversions and cross-device conversions," which GCLID-only imports can miss.

For most B2B teams, leads is the one that matters. A form fill is a cheap signal. A sales-accepted lead or an opportunity is the signal you actually want bidding to chase, and leads is how it gets back into Google Ads.

What changed for enhanced conversions in 2026?

Two things, both documented in Google's Help Center article on updates to enhanced conversions settings.

• One setting instead of two. Google is combining web and leads into a single on/off setting, which the article dates to June 2026. You "no longer need to choose a single implementation method"; the Google tag, Google Tag Manager and API connections can all send data. Since April 2026, Google Ads accepts user-provided data from website tags, Data Manager and API connections at the same time. Existing users who already accepted the customer data terms are migrated automatically, and you can still opt out per conversion action.
• Uploads move to the Data Manager API. "Starting June 15, 2026, offline conversions import and enhanced conversions for leads uploads will be migrated to the Data Manager API and blocked in the Google Ads API." Developer tokens that sent no requests between January and June 2026 "will not be allowlisted for legacy access." In practice: new integrations go to the Data Manager API, and existing ones should plan their move.

If your CRM sync was built by a developer on the Google Ads API, ask them which bucket you're in this week, not when imports stop showing up. If you use a no-code connection in Data Manager, the change mostly happens behind the scenes, but confirm your imports are still landing.

How do you set up enhanced conversions?

Turn it on, then decide how user data reaches Google. Google's settings article describes two paths to switch it on: at the account level under Goals, Settings, Customer data use, or on an individual conversion action. Either way you agree to the Google Ads Data Processing Terms.

Then pick how the tag finds the data. Google's Tag Manager setup guide lists three ways:

1. Automatic detection. Google looks for user data on the page. Least work, least control. If the data is on an earlier page than the conversion (a form before a thank-you page), you use a user-provided data event on the form page.
2. Manual configuration with CSS selectors. You point variables at the email, phone and address fields. More reliable than detection, but it breaks when someone redesigns the form.
3. Code. A variable returns the user data object directly, either raw (Google normalizes and hashes it) or already SHA-256 hashed. Google notes that "code snippet data is always prioritized."

Which method you choose changes how often a conversion arrives with usable data, and how much of that data matches. In the illustrative comparison below, the same hypothetical demo form sends user data four ways. Sending more identifiers raises the match rate, which lines up with Google's own diagnostics advice that "you can improve your matched conversions by sending more user data."

The numbers are hypothetical, so read the order, not the values. B2B forms make matching harder than consumer checkouts: a work email is less likely to be the address someone uses for their Google account. That's an argument for also collecting a phone number where it's reasonable to ask, and the form optimization guide covers when it is.

How does the hashing work?

SHA-256 turns a value into a fixed 64-character string. It's one-way: you can't run it backward to recover the email. Matching works because the same input always produces the same hash, so your hash of an address and Google's hash of the same address line up. Nobody gets beamed into the grid in plain text, Tron style; only the fingerprints meet.

That's also why normalization matters. "Jane@Company.com " and "jane@company.com" produce completely different hashes. Google's Help Center lists the rules: trim leading and trailing whitespace, convert to lowercase, format phone numbers in E.164 (for example +14155550123), and for gmail.com and googlemail.com addresses, remove the periods before the @. If you hash it yourself and skip a step, the match rate drops and nothing tells you why except the diagnostics report.

What actually changes in your reports?

Your reported conversions go up, a little, after a delay. Google's setup guide says that "after about 30 days, you'll be able to view the impact of enhanced conversions on your reporting." Until then, standard conversion tracking carries on as before.

Here's an illustrative 12-week view from a hypothetical B2B account averaging 38 to 39 form fills a week. Enhanced conversions go on in week 5. Nothing moves for a few weeks, then reported conversions settle around 14% higher. These are conversions that were happening all along, now credited to ads.

Three things to watch while you wait:

• Coverage rate. In Google's tag diagnostics report, coverage is enhanced conversion events with user data divided by all conversion events. Google says it "should be available within hours." Low coverage means the tag isn't finding the data.
• Match rate. Updated within 24 hours. Google labels a match rate between 0% and 15% as LOW and above 15% as HIGH, and shows INSUFFICIENT_VOLUME below 20 valid pings.
• Status. Excellent, Good, Needs attention or No recent data. Google won't show alerts if you had fewer than 20 conversions in the past 7 days, which covers a lot of B2B accounts.

One honest caveat: more reported conversions also means a lower reported cost per conversion, without anything getting cheaper. If you run tCPA, expect bidding to adjust to the new baseline, and don't celebrate a CPA drop that is really a measurement change.

How do you use enhanced conversions for leads with lead stages?

Google's setup has two steps: capture hashed user data on your site with the Google tag or Google Tag Manager (placed directly on the page, not inside a third-party tool or iframe), then import outcomes from your CRM with the same hashed data. Google's import FAQ says to "create a separate conversion action for each stage of the funnel," choose Qualified lead or Converted lead as the conversion goal, and "upload conversions at least daily."

The useful question is which stage to bid on. Each step down the funnel is a better signal and a smaller number. In this hypothetical month for a B2B software account, 420 form fills shrink to 9 closed deals:

Bidding on closed won here would give Smart Bidding 9 data points a month, which is too few to learn from. Bidding on form fills gives it plenty, but they're the wrong thing. Sales accepted, at 84, is the deepest stage with steady volume, so that's the primary goal; keep the other stages as secondary actions so you can still report on them. If deals carry very different values, the value-based bidding guide covers how to pass values per stage.

Timing matters too. Google allows 63 days from the click for imports that rely on personal data, and conversions can be adjusted for up to 55 days after they're first recorded. A B2B cycle longer than 2 months means your closed-won stage will miss some deals entirely, which is one more reason to bid on an earlier stage. This is also the setup that makes Performance Max for B2B workable, since it gives the campaign a goal better than "form submitted."

What consent do enhanced conversions require?

At minimum, you accept Google's customer data terms; Google's tag diagnostics docs note that data sent before you accept them "won't be processed." Beyond that, it depends where your visitors are.

• EEA traffic. Google's EU user consent policy requires you to "collect consent for use of personal data from end users based in the EEA" and pass those choices to Google. Consent mode's ad_user_data parameter "sets consent for sending user data to Google for advertising purposes," which is exactly what enhanced conversions do.
• Tag timing. Google warns that if your tags don't load until someone interacts with the cookie banner, it can't verify consent choices, which "may lead to loss in data."
• Everywhere else. It's good practice for your privacy policy to say you share hashed contact data with advertising partners for measurement. Local rules vary, so this is a question for counsel, not for the person setting up the tag.

What we don't know yet

• How much lift to expect. Google's impact report shows your own uplift for 30 days, but it doesn't publish a typical number by campaign type in the docs we reviewed. Treat any vendor's "average lift" figure with suspicion.
• B2B match rates. Work emails and personal Google accounts often don't line up. There's no public benchmark for B2B match rates worth quoting.
• The merged setting in practice. Google's own pages give the merge timing as both "soon" and June 2026. Check your account's settings page rather than assuming.
• Incrementality. Better attribution isn't proof the ads caused the conversions. It means the ones they did influence get counted.

For how enhanced conversions fit the rest of a B2B search program, start with the B2B PPC playbook.

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