Why I delay Google Ads conversions on purpose

Conventional wisdom says Google Ads conversion data should reach Google as quickly as possible.

I've made a deliberate trade-off. I send conversion data more slowly in exchange for data that's permanent, auditable and recoverable.

Someone on Reddit recently challenged that approach.

Their objection was:

Offline conversion tracking is reliable but has ~5-day upload delay.

And as a consequence:

New campaigns suffer: no real-time data for smart bidding → higher costs & longer learning phase.

It was an interesting objection because it doesn't match my experience.

Litiro, the lead data platform I've built, uses offline conversion imports for all conversions, not just what happens in the client's CRM.

For example, when someone fills in a form, Litiro records the lead in its own database first.

Form submitted → Litiro records conversion → Litiro uploads conversion to Google

This is different to how form conversions are usually tracked with a Google tag.

In case you don't know, the tag is a bit of computer code that runs inside the visitor's web browser. When the visitor does something on your website e.g. fills in the form the tag sends a message to Google.

Form submitted → tag sends conversion to Google

Delivering the conversion is instant. Google still takes a while to process it.

Litiro is slower because it uploads conversions once a day. But it's not five days slow. In practice, I usually see those conversions in Google Ads the following day, not five days later.

Does speed matter?

But even if it took longer, does the speed actually matter?

The argument was:

New campaigns suffer: no real-time data for smart bidding → higher costs & longer learning phase.

At first glance that sounds logical.

A new campaign has no conversion data. The longer it takes to get the data into the account, the longer the algorithm takes to learn.

But that's not quite how Smart Bidding works.

Google tells us that the bidding algorithm can learn from other sources when there is little or no conversion data available.

In other words, a new campaign doesn't start completely from scratch. (This is why you can launch a new campaign with a conversion-based bidding strategy and get leads from day one.)

Assume a brand-new campaign generates five conversions on day one. How much of day two's performance is based on those five data points?

Nobody outside Google knows for sure. My intuition is that five conversions is too little evidence to outweigh the much larger body of data Google already has.

So I don't think it's reasonable to jump from: Google hasn't received this campaign's first few conversions yet to Smart Bidding can't learn therefore higher costs & longer learning phase.

The trade-off

It is true that my approach introduces a delay. But here's what I gain in exchange.

The traditional way to track a form conversion looks something like this:

Ad click → form submitted → visitor's browser tells Google

The conversion event happens on the visitor's device. It's sent directly to Google.

When everything works, it's fine. But if something goes wrong there is no way to debug that actual conversion event.

• If a conversion goes missing, I can't inspect what happened.
• I can't compare what was recorded with what Google received.
• I can't retry it.

It's a shooting star. It flashes once, then it's gone forever.

Maybe that'd be OK if conversion tracking was for record keeping only. But these days conversions are one of the strongest signals Google uses to drive your ads. In my mind it's pretty important that that signal be right, reliable and auditable.

And that's what I get with this flow: Ad click → form submitted → conversion recorded → conversion uploaded to Google

I'd rather build a measurement system that's reliable than fast.

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Google Ads conversion tracking for Pipedrive

Every Google Ads lead leaves a trail of evidence

Why a Google Ads account audit isn't enough

Why I'm rethinking how I audit Google Ads accounts

What is Google actually learning from?

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