Set up Conversion Lift based on users
Conversion Lift measures the incremental number of conversions, site visits, and any other action directly driven by your ad. Conversion Lift data can help you adjust and improve your ads to generate more sales, leads, and app installs.
On this page
- Before you begin
- Conversion Lift feasibility
- Study setup eligibility for campaigns
- Best practices to decide holdout size
- Best practices for measuring Conversion Lift
- Instructions
- Frequently asked questions
- Before you can set up Conversion Lift measurement, you need to create an eligible campaign.
- You can use Conversion Lift based on users for all campaigns except Hotel ads and Commerce Media.
- If you’re interested in using Conversion Lift based on users for Display, Search, Shopping, or Performance Max campaigns, reach out to your Google account representative for more information. Learn more About Conversion Lift.
Conversion Lift feasibility, also called Study Power, is an essential tool that estimates the certainty of results from your lift study. It helps determine the likelihood of successfully measuring the true, causal impact of your campaigns.
Study power indicates your study's certainty of achieving conclusive results and is shaped by several factors:
- Historical campaign data at the account level
- Estimated lift
- Your chosen study configuration, including:
- Selected conversion actions
- Daily campaign budget
- Study duration
- Traffic split (holdback percentage)
The estimated certainty of lift is shown as a percentage range from 50% to 95%, in 5% increments. A higher percentage indicates a greater likelihood that your ads will generate lift. If your study power is below 90%, budget guidance will be provided to help you achieve 90% certainty of lift. You should determine the optimal certainty of lift for your needs. Learn more about certainty levels.
Guidance:
- 90%+ certainty: Aim for 90% certainty for the most reliable results. If your setup is below 90%, the tool will provide budget guidance to help you reach this level.
- Directional insights: Results between 50% and 90% can be used as directional insights.
- Optimal level: You should determine the optimal certainty of lift based on your specific business needs and risk tolerance.
Compatible conversion actions and data strength
To use Conversion Lift, your Google Ads account must track at least one compatible conversion action, either directly or through a manager account. All conversions must be set up to fire unconditionally. To ensure your account has high enough data strength to run a reliable study, we recommend using these compatible sources and features:
- Enhanced conversions for web: Turn on enhanced conversions for web to pass securely hashed, first-party customer data when a transaction occurs on your website. This captures conversions missed by traditional methods, matches web transactions back to Google accounts at an identity level, and may improve conversions. Learn more About enhanced conversions for web.
- Enhanced conversions for leads: Turn on this feature and ensure you have sufficient hashed PII to upload offline customer data securely from your lead forms. This links your offline lead-generation events back to your campaigns at an identity level, recovers unobserved conversions through modeling, and increases your incremental ROAS. Learn more About enhanced conversions for leads.
- Consent mode: Implement this feature to ensure your conversion tags adjust automatically based on user consent choices. This is critical to recover missing data through modeling, preserve measurement accuracy, and maintain legal compliance in privacy-sensitive regions like the European Economic Area. Learn how to Get started with consent mode.
- Enhanced conversions for apps or Firebase SDK: Use this or App conversion tracking through the app attribution partner framework (AAP) to track app conversion events. You can review detailed data diagnostics for these events within your app measurement platform.
- Google tag gateway: Set up this infrastructure feature to route your tracking scripts through your own first-party domain rather than third-party Google domains. This recovers missing signals otherwise blocked by browser restrictions or ad blockers. Learn how to Set up Google tag gateway for advertisers.
Our system runs automated diagnostics during study setup to verify your tracking readiness. You can create and save your study regardless of warning severity, but we highly recommend resolving these gaps before launch to optimize the accuracy and reliability of your incrementality data.
You have the flexibility to adjust the conversion actions you want to track until the study officially starts. By default, the conversion actions selected are those identified as primary for the campaigns included in the study. Changing this selection could influence the Study Power. If you choose to concentrate on a smaller number of conversions, you'll still be able to access conversion lift reports for all conversion actions at both a total and goal level after the study concludes.
Keep the following in mind:
- Currently unsupported conversion actions: Store visit, store sales, offline conversion import without personally identifiable information (PII) data.
- The only way to measure in-app conversions for non-app campaigns is through the Google Ads API or Google data manager. Reach out to your account team for more information.
Campaigns can only be part of a single study at the time. If your campaign isn't eligible at the set up time, it means that it’s included in a different study (this can be Brand Lift, Search Lift or Conversion Lift). Remove that campaign from that study, before setting up the new study.
For advertisers looking for directional lift (lower than 90% confidence), any budgets above $5,000 USD and 1,000 conversions will allow access to these results. You won't be able to save your study if the budget is below $5,000 USD.
When you set up the study, the tool will provide a recommendation that allows you to maximize your chances of detecting lift. If you'd like to manually customize it, keep in consideration the following:
The optimal holdout size depends on how much data you want to collect, and how quickly you'd like to do that.
- Higher holdouts (up to 50%) increase the sample, but also have a higher opportunity cost (not showing your ad to control users).
- Smaller holdouts will require you to have a longer study to collect enough samples to detect differences between baseline conversions and exposed groups.
Conversion categories
- Upper-funnel and mid-funnel conversion actions, such as pageviews or lead forms, show higher lift. They increase your likelihood of measuring clear results.
- We recommend measuring both bottom-funnel actions and upper-funnel or mid-funnel actions.
- Use upper-funnel actions as secondary KPIs to verify that people respond positively to your ads. This helps when your bottom-funnel actions don't have enough data.
Bidding strategies
- Campaigns using conversion-based or conversion-value-based bidding strategies have higher lift. These include Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, or Target ROAS.
- We recommend trying these strategies to verify if they lead to stronger lift for your campaigns.
Attribution model
- Campaigns using data-driven attribution are associated with higher lift. Our data-driven attribution model calibrates using incrementality signals.
- We recommend trying data-driven attribution when you optimize toward incremental conversions to verify if it leads to stronger lift.
Study duration
- Set your study duration to a length that captures your average conversion lag. This is the average time between an impression and a conversion.
- We allow studies as short as 7 days but typically recommend more than 14 days. This is especially true if your business has a longer conversion lag.
- Short purchase cycles, like ordering food, can run a short 7–14 day study. Expensive products, like travel accommodations, require more than 14 days.
- We've found up to a 17% drop in Absolute Lift in studies with a long conversion lag that run for less than 14 days. Because of this, we recommend running your study for a minimum of 14 days.
Frequency for running Conversion Lift studies
- Every incrementality study comes with an opportunity cost. By holding back a portion of your audience from your ads, you might miss out on driving incremental conversions.
- Be thoughtful about how frequently you run these studies. Study frequency tends to align with budget cycles.
- Test before you make major budget decisions or use studies to validate hypotheses from Media Mix Model results. This ensures the most accurate allocation of funds.
- Lift results fall within a confidence interval, so we encourage you to implement a testing plan to measure incrementality regularly.
- Based on historical data, most advertisers run about 1–2 studies per year.
- Talk with your account manager if incrementality optimization is your goal.
Creative matters
- Your creatives are what users view, and it compels them to convert. Stronger creatives lead to stronger incrementality.
- Align your ads with the goal you want to measure. Great ads start with the Core ABCD Principles:
- Attention: Hook and sustain attention with an immersive story
- Branding: Brand early, often, and richly
- Connection: Help people think or feel something
- Direction: Ask them to take action
Set up Conversion Lift based on users
- Go to Lift measurement under the Measurements dropdown within the Goals menu 👁 Goals Icon
. - Select the plus 👁 Image
button. - In the "Create a lift study" page, select "Conversion Lift" under "What do you want to measure?".
- Under "How do you want your test groups to be created?", select “Based on users”. Then, select Continue.
- In the "New Study" page, give your study a name.
- Under "Campaigns", choose which campaigns you’d like to opt into Conversion Lift.
- Note: Campaigns can only be active in one study at a time. If you’re unable to select a campaign, it most likely means that it’s already being used in another study.
- Select from a list: Choose 👁 Plus
Select Campaigns to choose specific campaigns from a list. Filter your campaigns based on eligibility, status, or type. You can select secondary filters including Campaign name, Between dates, Days active, or Minimum budget. You can also focus on your preferred attributes using the Columns 👁 Image
dropdown. After you’ve selected your campaigns, select Apply. - Upload using a template: Choose 👁 Image
Select campaigns by upload to upload campaign IDs using a CSV, Excel, or TXT file. You can use the linked template on the pop-up that appears.- In the pop-up that opens, you may find one of these statuses:
- Eligible: Campaigns you can select for the lift study
- Needs attention: Campaigns that are inactive, part of another study, or incompatible with your chosen lift type
- Not found: Campaigns that aren't found
- If you make changes to the campaigns under “Needs Attention”, you’ll be prompted to refresh the pop-up page.
- After you’ve selected your campaigns, select Select campaigns.
- In the pop-up that opens, you may find one of these statuses:
- You can choose one or more conversions to focus on during your conversion lift study, or keep all primary conversions that are selected by default based on which campaigns you choose. Regardless of which conversions you choose, you can still filter for all conversions in the report at the end of your study. Choosing conversions that happen more often increases certainty.
- Note: You can choose one or more conversion goals to focus on. Your study will measure only the conversion actions you select within each conversion goal. When the study ends, you can view results by conversion goals only, not the conversion actions within them.
- Choose the type of metrics you want to focus on in the report for this study. The other type of metrics will still be available in the report.
- Conversions focuses on incremental conversions and incremental cost per action (iCPA)
- Conversion value focuses on the incremental conversion value and incremental return on ad spend you drive from your ads.
- Your study power is calculated based on what you select. Learn more about your Conversion Lift based on users measurement data.
- Select the start and end dates for your study to update study duration.
- Update the size of the holdback by inputting a value from 1% to 50%.
- Note: If you’re running studies with Brand Lift and Search Lift you must leave the 30% holdback.
- Review the study power to get an estimate of the certainty of lift you can expect at the end of your study. For example, a study power of 70% to 80% means you can expect that if your study detects lift, the certainty in the detected lift will be between 70% and 80%.
- Note: A study power above 90% likely means you'll find the most certain results at the end of your study. Changing the duration of your study and increasing your campaign budget will help you increase your study power. Additionally, you can increase your study power by increasing the study duration, your traffic split, and adding more conversion actions. Focusing on increased conversions and increased conversion value can affect your study power if the conversion values vary.
- Select Create study. Your study will start on the date specified in the Lift study setting.
View your Conversion Lift measurement data
Conversion Lift measurement data is available for each lift study in the "Lift Measurement" table. You can also select a specific study to view more granular results.
Here’s how you view your Conversion Lift measurement data:
- Select the columns icon 👁 A picture of the Google Ads columns icon
. - Select Modify columns.
- Select Conversion Lift, then select Apply.
What is the best approach for implementing a Conversion Lift study? How can I proceed and which specific campaigns would be most suitable?
You can set up studies based on users by following the instructions above, or Set up Conversion Lift based on geography.
To decide which campaigns are more suitable, you'll need to ask yourself what would you like to learn from this study, if you'd like to know “how much additional value are these Demand Gen creating, given that all your other campaigns are still running”, then choosing all Demand Gen campaigns would be the most suitable for you.
We recommend reaching out to your Google account representative to plan a learning agenda and decide which are the most relevant studies for you.
Can I add another lift measurement type (for example, Brand Lift) to an existing Conversion Lift study?
No, you can’t add another lift measurement to an ongoing study. You need to end your existing study and create a new one to include Brand Lift or Search Lift.
Can I stop and restart my study?
Yes, you can pause by changing the end date. When the study ends, you won’t be able to restart it.
Can I add or remove a campaign from an existing Conversion Lift study?
Yes, you can add and remove campaigns from an existing Conversion Lift study, but you can't add the same campaign to multiple studies.
Can I make changes to a Conversion Lift study that’s already running?
Yes, you can make changes to the end date, lift measurement type, add or remove campaigns.
Can I make changes to a campaign that is included in a Conversion Lift study that’s already running?
Yes you can but you should proceed with caution. We only recommend making changes which are business as usual (ex. Change bids or budgets). Updating creatives and audiences during the study might impact the performance of the study, and it will be hard to get learnings of what is working for your strategy.