Popsixle allows you to send high-quality 1st party data to various ad platforms including Google Ads. This article will help you better understand how you can interpret the data Popsixle is sending to your Google Ad account.
How Popsixle helps ad platforms
Before getting started, it’s important to understand how high quality data via Popsixle helps ad platforms:
- Reduce ad platform data modeling: Ad platforms are known to take more credit than they sometimes deserve in their respective ad manager accounts. This is often because they don’t have the full picture of what occurred on your website and so are forced to rely on data modeling to fill the gaps. Popsixle solves this problem by giving ad platforms the complete picture and reducing their need to use data modeling as much as possible.
- Provide privacy first 1st party data back to ad platforms: Increasingly ad platforms rely on algorithms to determine who to show your ads to. These algorithms are powered by data. Popsixle sends as much of this data as possible to ad platforms, in a privacy-first way, so that they have the information they need to reach your ideal customer as quickly as possible.
Popsixle does the above for your Google Ads account by sending server-side data that includes 1st party data to Google. Learn more below about where you can see this in your Google Ad account.
Where to see Popsixle data in Google Ads Manager
In your Google Ads account click on Goals → Summary
Within the purchase conversion section you will see a conversion action that includes your business name and Popsixle. This is the conversion action that Popsixle is sending data for.
Within the purchase conversion table you will see the following:
- Status of all data connections (and a measurement of data quality) under the Status column
- The number of conversions recognized by Popsixle and any other data connection you have created under the All conv. column
- The action optimization status for each conversion action (primary versus secondary) under the Action optimization column
Keep reading to understand how this information applies to your brand’s success with Popsixle’s Google connection.
Measuring data quality/data connection status
Where to check:
In the Status section, hover your mouse over the word “Active” to see a popup that will link to diagnostic information about your Popsixle data connection. Click the link that says “view diagnostics” and you should see a screen that looks like the below:
What this page shows:
This page shows you the total number of events sent by Popsixle and the deemed quality by Google. Popsixle sends data whenever a Google Click ID (GCLID) is detected which leads to a high degree of success so you should expect to see a very strong rating by Google.
Why don’t I see anything about enhanced conversions?
Enhanced conversions allow a user to supplement purchase event data sent via a browser pixel or Google Tag Manager with 1st party data about a purchaser. This approach is not necessary with a server-side connection like Popsixle as it is able to send 1st party data when the purchase event is sent therefore making the data “enhanced” from the start.
How to compare the number of conversions recognized by Popsixle and any other data connection you have available
Where to check:
This information is available under the “all conversions” (“All conv.”) column found in the purchase conversion event table referenced above.
How Popsixle sends data to Google Ads:
When Popsixle detects that someone clicks on a Google ad it anonymizes and stores the click data in your Popsixle data warehouse. If and when the person who clicked the ad makes a purchase, Popsixle ties the click information to the purchase and sends this data to Google, as long as it falls into the attribution window you have set up in your Google Ads account.
The Popsixle difference:
You may have previously been using data from a web pixel or event data from GA4 to optimize your Google Ads.
Popsixle is built to balance both performance and accuracy. Typically, if you view performance over the past 7-10 days, Popsixle will show more revenue and more conversions than other options. However, as more time passes (30-90 days old), other connections like the Google pixel or GA4 may take more credit due to data modeling or other factors.
Popsixle’s recommendation is to let the data collect for a week, or till you’ve had at least 20-30 conversions, to better understand the differences between data sources. Once you feel confident in the Popsixle data, you can then make the switch to using Popsixle’s connection as your primary data source. Keep reading below to learn how to make this change.
Understanding action optimization status
Where to check:
You can check the status of all conversion actions by looking at the event table under the column “action optimization”. You’ll see two different types, primary and secondary.
What the different statuses mean:
- Primary actions: Conversion actions that are used for bidding for your ad campaigns.
- Secondary actions: Conversion actions are for tracking purposes only. They are reported on in the “All conversions” action in any report you pull.
More information from Google is available here.
Should the Popsixle conversion action be set up as a primary or secondary action?
When you first connect your Popsixle account to Google, the conversion action will automatically be set to be a secondary action, meaning it won’t be used by Google for optimization purposes right away. Popsixle’s recommendation is to let the new event gather data for at least 20-30 conversions and then switch to the Popsixle conversion as your primary action.
This however is not required and completely your decision. Even if you leave Popsixle data as Secondary, you can make use of it as a comparison point to ensure there are no issues with your primary data source (e.g., double counting or data modeling).
Putting it all together; how to choose what is best for your business
The above information lays out how you can best interpret the data being sent to your Google Ads account from Popsixle and how you can make use of it. Popsixle’s goal is to ensure that you are sending the highest quality data possible to ad platforms so that you have the best ad performance as possible.
If you have any additional questions please reach out to our team at success@popsixle.com