The Glossary

Smart Bidding is the name for four Google Ads bid strategies: Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value. You stop setting « 2 € max per click ». You give a goal (conversions or value), and Google's AI sets the bid at the exact moment each search happens. To decide, it combines the device, the city (even if your targeting covers a whole region), the day and time, the language, the browser, your remarketing lists and the actual search query, not just the keyword that matched it.

A ready buyer and a casual browser sometimes type the same search. You can adjust device and location by hand; signal combinations are reserved for Smart Bidding, and they let it bid more on the first than on the second. The algo also learns across all your campaigns, so a new campaign with no history can still benefit. To judge results, Google recommends a period with at least 30 conversions, a month or longer (50 for Target ROAS).

You set the average amount you are willing to pay for a conversion, and Google sets each bid based on how likely the ad is to convert. With a target CPA of 50 €, some conversions cost you 30 €, others 80 €, but the average trends toward your target. If your campaign has history, Google suggests a target: your average CPA over the last 30 days, adjusted for conversions that come in late. Since June 2026 the interface calls it simply « Target CPA » instead of « Maximize conversions with a Target CPA », and it works the same way.

You steer profitability through cost: every conversion counts the same, and the algo holds their average price. It fits when you know what a lead or a sale is worth to you, and it can start with no conversion history at all. Just plan for some days where the campaign spends up to 2 times your average daily budget, without going over the monthly limit. To evaluate, compare your real CPA with the « average target CPA » shown, which includes your target changes over time, over 30 days and at least 30 conversions.

You set the revenue you want back for each euro spent. Google's own math: 5 € in sales for 1 € in ad spend gives 5 ÷ 1 × 100%, a target ROAS of 500%. The algo predicts the value of each possible conversion from the values you report, then bids high on searches likely to bring a big basket and low on the others. Some sales return more than your target, some less: it holds the average. On Search and Shopping, you need at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days. Since June 2026 the interface calls it « Target ROAS » instead of « Maximize conversion value with a Target ROAS ».

Profitability is read in value: one 500 € sale weighs more than five 20 € sales. Google recommends this approach when your conversions don't all have the same value for your business, and when you have a precise return target. You can even weight value with conversion value rules (a customer type, a device or a location that is worth more to you), so the algo goes after what really counts.

You give a daily budget, and Google aims to spend all of it to bring back as many conversions as possible, setting the bid on every search. No cost target: every conversion counts the same, whatever it costs. Your bid adjustments for location or schedule are no longer used, with one exception: you can still exclude a device with a -100% adjustment.

This is the volume strategy: filling a calendar, clearing stock, when every conversion is worth as much as the next and you don't have a target acquisition cost yet. Since it is built to spend the whole budget, it shows as « limited by budget » by design. To know whether more budget would bring more, Google advises the budget simulator rather than the « Lost IS (budget) » column, which doesn't account for how this strategy works.

Same logic as Maximize Conversions, but the algo optimizes value rather than count: it bids higher on searches likely to bring a high-value conversion. It prefers one 300 € sale over three at 40 €. You decide which value to maximize when you set up conversion tracking: the sale revenue, or your margin.

When your sales don't all have the same value, counting conversions is not enough: for Maximize Conversions, a 300 € order and a 40 € one weigh the same. Here total value guides the algo, and if you send your margin as the value, it goes straight for what makes you money. As soon as you add a target ROAS, the strategy behaves like Target ROAS: that is the next step, once you know your profitability goal.

Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type: from a single campaign, it reaches all Google Ads inventory, meaning YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps. You provide the assets (headlines, descriptions, images, videos, product feeds) and your bidding goals, and Google's AI combines them to serve where it expects the best conversions. Assets sit in asset groups: Google recommends adding as many as possible, up to 15 headlines and 5 descriptions, with images and videos in several orientations. Without a video, Google may generate one from your assets.

One campaign covers channels you used to manage separately, and the algo optimizes across them based on your conversion goals. That is why Google recommends judging a Performance Max campaign at campaign level, and using placement reports for brand safety rather than for performance evaluation. It lives alongside your Search campaigns under a clear rule: when a query matches an exact match keyword, the Search campaign takes priority. Performance Max search themes, on the other hand, carry the same priority as phrase and broad match keywords.

Quality Score is a diagnostic tool: a score from 1 to 10, available for each keyword. It combines three components: expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Each one gets a status of « Above average », « Average » or « Below average », compared with other advertisers whose ads showed for the exact same search over the last 90 days. There is no ad group, campaign or account Quality Score.

Think of it as a thermometer: Google states that the score itself is not an input in the ad auction. What counts at auction time is ad quality, and the score sums it up. The link with your budget is real: according to Google, higher quality ads typically cost less per click. So the score tells you where to dig, and each component below average points to a specific job: the ad's hook, its match with the keyword, or the page after the click.

Customer value × margin × closing rate. 2,000 € customer, 40 % margin, 25 % closing: 200 € max per lead. Above that, you lose money on every signature.

Without this ceiling, no CPL is "good" or "bad": 60 € per lead is excellent for a 15,000 € project and unsustainable for a 500 € offer.

Customer acquisition is one of the customer lifecycle goals in Google Ads. It offers three settings: "New Customer Value" (bid higher for new customers than existing ones), "High Value New Customer" and "New Customer Only". To recognize an existing customer, Google relies on your first-party data, a customer list and your site tag. You can also tell it on every purchase with the new_customer parameter of the conversion tag: true for a buyer with no purchase over the chosen period (540 days by default), false for a known customer.

Without this setting, a first order and a repeat purchase weigh the same in your bids. With "New Customer Value", you add extra value to every new customer, and the algorithm goes after it: your bids work to grow your customer base, not only to sell again to people who already know you. This setting needs value-based bidding (Target ROAS or Maximize conversion value) and a Purchase conversion goal.

CPA divides what you spent by the number of conversions you got: 1,000 € for 40 conversions gives 25 €. In Google Ads, it shows in the « Cost / conv. » column, and it only counts the primary conversion actions the campaign optimizes toward, the ones in the « Conversions » column. Secondary actions stay visible in « All conv. ». CPA also splits into CPC ÷ conversion rate: a 1 € click that converts at 4% gives a 25 € CPA.

It is the price at which your ads buy a sale or a lead, and you read it next to what that conversion leaves you. A simple picture: CPA is the purchase price of your customer, your margin is the resale price; as long as the first stays under the second, each conversion leaves you money. It is also the instruction of the Target CPA strategy, which sets each bid to hold an average cost per conversion.

CTR divides your clicks by your impressions: 5 clicks for 100 impressions give 5%. Each ad, product listing and keyword has its own, in the « CTR » column. Google uses it to gauge how your keywords and ads perform, and your CTR contributes to expected CTR, a part of ad quality that counts in Ad Rank.

With the same impressions, each CTR point you gain turns into clicks: on 20,000 impressions, going from 3% to 4% brings 200 more clicks. CTR also weighs on the price of your clicks, through expected CTR. A simple picture: your CTR is the grade of your past homework, expected CTR is the grade Google predicts for today's exam, and the prediction is what counts on auction day.

Google Ads separates three numbers. Max. CPC is your bid, the highest amount you are willing to pay for a click. Actual CPC is the amount charged, often lower, sometimes much lower. Average CPC, in the « Avg. CPC » column, is the average of your actual CPCs over a period: your cost divided by your clicks, so 500 € for 400 clicks gives 1.25 €. Google Help notes that CPC pricing is sometimes known as pay-per-click (PPC).

The price of your click depends on your rank. You pay the minimum needed to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and beat the advertiser just below you, and your ad quality counts in that rank. A simple picture: an auction where the winner pays just enough to get ahead of the second bidder. A more relevant ad can therefore win a higher position at a lower price.

PPC, for pay-per-click, is the word of the English-speaking market; the French market says SEA, for Search Engine Advertising, and the Spanish market SEM. Google Ads Help confirms it: CPC pricing is sometimes known as pay-per-click (PPC). The ads are bought on Google Ads, which shows them on Google Search, the Shopping tab, Images and Maps, and on Microsoft Advertising, formerly Bing Ads, which shows them with the results on Microsoft Bing, AOL, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.

PPC captures an intent: Microsoft describes search advertising as ads shown to people who have shown explicit interest in a product by searching for it. It is a shop window on a busy street where you pay only for the people who come in: in a pay-per-click campaign, impressions stay free, and your budget buys visits from people who have just typed their need.

Google Ads defines it as the webpage where people end up after they click your ad, usually your final URL. It can be any page of your site, including the homepage, as long as it shares the domain of your display URL. Google rates its « landing page experience » for each keyword, one of the three Quality Score components with expected clickthrough rate and ad relevance: « Above average », « Average » or « Below average », against other advertisers who showed for the same search over 90 days. It looks at the usefulness and relevance of the information, ease of navigation, the number of links and the expectations created by the ad.

The ad, the page and the offer form one chain, and the page is the middle link: it is where the visitor checks if what they read is true. A page that repeats the ad message at the top, with a button that names the result and reviews visible early, gives the same click more chances to become a request.

Google Ads, called Google AdWords until July 24, 2018, is Google's online advertising program. An account has three layers: the account (email, password, billing), campaigns (budget and settings) and ad groups (ads and keywords). Campaign types cover Search, Shopping, Display, Video on YouTube, App and Performance Max. On every search, an auction ranks the eligible ads by Ad Rank: your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, Ad Rank thresholds, auction competitiveness, the search context and the expected impact of assets.

You buy a place in front of someone who is already looking for what you sell, at the price the competition sets at that moment. As in a tender, the strongest proposal can win at a lower price: a more relevant ad can rank above a higher bid, and your actual CPC is the minimum needed to beat the ad below yours. Opening an account is free, with no minimum spend.

Google Ads now files remarketing under « your data »: data segments group the visitors of your website or app, the people who interacted with your YouTube videos, and your customer lists. The Google tag adds each visitor to the segment whose rule they meet, for the membership duration you choose: 30 days by default, 540 days at most. A list serves on the Display Network, the Search Network and YouTube once it has 100 active users over the last 30 days, and a new list can take 48 to 72 hours to fill.

It is the stamp at the entrance of a festival: each visit sets it, each new visit renews it, and it fades on its own at the end of the duration you chose. Your ad picks up a conversation that started on your site, with someone who already knows your brand. Google advises matching the duration to your sales cycle: a few days for a movie ticket, a few months for a car.

At Google, display runs on the Display Network: more than 2 million websites, videos and apps, which reach over 90% of Internet users according to Comscore. A Display campaign serves responsive display ads there: you upload images, headlines, logos, videos and descriptions, and Google AI adjusts the size and format to each placement. Optimized targeting is set by default. Since June 2026, Google is moving these campaigns to Demand Gen, which also runs on YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps.

Display shows you to people who are not searching for you yet. Google sums it up: the Search Network reaches people when they search, the Display Network captures their attention earlier in the buying cycle. Think of a street poster next to a shop assistant: one creates the desire, the other answers a request. Display also brings back the visitors of your site, with your data segments.

You see it in your campaign’s bid status, and when you hover over it, Google Ads gives you one of three reasons: a new strategy (created or reactivated), a composition change (campaigns, ad groups or keywords added to or removed from the strategy), or a goal change (the conversions you optimize for have changed significantly). Meanwhile, the campaign serves as normal and keeps entering auctions. Changing the budget, the target, the ads or the targeting never triggers this status or erases your history, and a new budget, target or targeting applies from the next auction.

Think of a GPS that recalculates after you change destination: the car keeps driving while it plans the new route, and slowing down does not make it recalculate. The label fades within 7 days, but according to Google, performance typically reaches the new goal within 1 to 2 conversion cycles, faster with many conversions, slower with a tight target, a small budget or narrow targeting. To judge, wait for those 1 to 2 cycles, then compare over 2 conversion cycles or 2 weeks, whichever is longer, allowing for conversions that come in late.

Instead of setting a strategy in each campaign (the standard strategy), you create it once and attach the campaigns, ad groups and keywords it covers. It exists for the four Smart Bidding strategies ("Maximize conversions", "Maximize conversion value", "Target ROAS", "Target CPA") and for two automated strategies, "Maximize clicks" and "Target impression share". It is stored in your Shared library, on the "Bid strategies" page of the "Budgets and bidding" menu, where you edit it and track its performance. Google used to call it a "flexible bid strategy", and it is not available for Performance Max.

It is the shared kitty of a flat share: everyone puts money in on their own, and the total is what counts. Your campaigns with the same goal follow one target and one setting, which you change in one move. Google recommends a portfolio strategy over a standard one as soon as several campaigns are involved, and advises pairing it with a shared budget, so the unused budget of one campaign moves to the campaigns limited by their budget.

Google defines it as a subset of Smart Bidding that covers "Maximize conversion value", with or without a "Target ROAS". The first aims for as much value as possible within your daily budget, the second for as much value as possible at a set ROAS. The other family, conversion-based bidding ("Maximize conversions", "Target CPA"), aims for volume. To use it, you must report at least two different values, real ones (revenue) or proxy ones (a lead score), either several values for one conversion (dynamic values) or a fixed value per conversion type (static values).

It is the fisherman who weighs his basket instead of counting his fish: ten sardines are not worth one tuna. This bidding fits when your customers, products or services do not all bring in the same amount. Google advises picking a single stage between the lead and the sale, balancing accuracy and delay: the final sale carries the most accurate values, a qualified lead comes in sooner. Then judge the campaign on the value it generates, not on its CPA.

You pick the target placement among three: "Top" (the ads next to the top organic results), "Absolute top" (the very first of those ads) or "Anywhere" in the results. Then you set the percentage. With 65% on absolute top, Google Ads sets your CPC bids so the ad shows there 65% of the times it could have shown. You add a Max CPC bid limit. Impression share only covers the Google Search Network, without search partners, and the strategy exists as a standard or a portfolio strategy.

It is the sign above your door: when someone searches for your name, they should see it. Google gives this case, brand terms with a 100% target, and the one of a local shoe store facing bigger chains that wants to show up on important searches nearby. This strategy buys presence, it does not aim for conversions or value, so keep it for campaigns where visibility is the goal. Your existing bid adjustments are no longer used, except excluding a device with -100%.

Google calls "auction-time bidding" what the four Smart Bidding strategies do, optimizing for conversions or conversion value in every auction. The system sets a bid for each individual auction of each query, then bids up or down depending on how well that query is likely to perform. Signals are attributes of a person or their context at that moment: location intent on top of physical location, the operating system, the characteristics of the ad about to show, the Search Network partner, and on Shopping the product attributes and price competitiveness.

Think of an auction house. The absentee bid left the day before offers the same price for every lot, the bidder in the room looks at each lot before raising a hand. With manual bidding, you set a max CPC in advance, adjustable by device or location. Here, two searches that trigger the same keyword can get two different bids. Google’s example: "leather boots" and "boot repairs" both broad match the keyword "boots", but the first is more likely to end in a purchase, and the bid follows.

You create the adjustment in "Tools", "Budgets and bidding" menu, "Adjustments", "Seasonal" option. You pick the "Conversion rate" type, the start and end dates, the scope (campaign types or specific campaigns, up to 2,000 per event) and the expected change. If you expect a 50% rise in conversion rate during a 3-day sale, you add an adjustment of up to +50%. The tool covers Search, Standard Shopping and Display campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS, plus Performance Max and App (beta) campaigns on all strategies. It is not available for Travel campaigns.

Your promotion is something only you know the date and size of. It is the word you drop to the baker before the village fair: he could not guess it, so he bakes more bread for that day. During the event, campaigns optimize their bids with the conversion rate you announced, then go back on their own to how they worked before, with no reverse adjustment needed once the promotion is over.

The average daily budget says how much you are comfortable spending each day, on average, over the month. Google steers spend toward the days when clicks and conversions are more likely, when search traffic rises or when it predicts a better return. Some days stay under the budget, others go over it, with two safeguards: the daily spending limit, two times the average daily budget for most campaigns, and the monthly spending limit, 30.4 times that budget. To start from a monthly amount, divide it by 30.4, the average number of days in a month (365/12). 304 € a month gives 10 € a day.

It is the monthly grocery envelope: some days you fill the cart, other days you just pick up milk, and the total stays inside the envelope. With 50 € a day, a 100 € day is within the rules, and the month does not go over 1,520 €. So your budget reads by the month, and the budget report shows what you are projected to pay at the end of the month and the effect of your past changes.

Google divides your impressions by the number of impressions you were eligible for, an estimate based on your targeting, approval status and ad quality. The calculation also counts the auctions where your ad was competitive enough to show, for example at twice its current bid, but can exclude the ones that would need a 1,000% bid increase. Two columns explain the gap. "Search lost IS (budget)" measures the time your ads didn’t show because the budget was too low, at campaign level only. "Search lost IS (rank)" measures the time lost to a poor Ad Rank in the auction. You find them in the columns, under "Competitive metrics".

Think of an ice cream seller on a beach. Impression share tells you how many passers-by he could offer an ice cream to, out of everyone who walked past. The "budget" loss is the stock running out at 3 pm; the "rank" loss is the people who went to a better placed stand. The first is handled with budget, which, according to Google, controls how often an ad shows; the second with what weighs in rank, such as your bid and your ad quality.

Instead of setting a budget per campaign, you create one shared pot, and Google Ads automatically reallocates the unused part to campaigns limited by budget. Google Ads Help gives this example: 100 € a day split evenly between two campaigns, one spends only 40 € of its 50 € on a slow day, and the 10 € left can go to the second one if it can reach enough traffic. Shared budgets are available for Search, Shopping, Display and Video campaigns. They don’t work with campaigns that use a total budget, or with campaigns that are part of an experiment. Google recommends pairing them with a portfolio bid strategy.

It is one water tank for several fields: the water one field doesn’t drink flows to the next one that is thirsty. You spend less time moving money from one campaign to another, and a campaign short on budget gets what another one didn’t spend. Google says that on average, advertisers who combine shared budgets and portfolio bid strategies on Search get 13% more conversions (Google internal data, January 2024 to March 2025).

You pick the "Campaign total budget" option when you create the campaign, with a start date and an end date. Each day, Google looks at what has already been spent and adjusts daily spending to try to spend the full budget over the remaining days. There is no daily spending limit, and you are never charged more than the total. The period runs from 3 to 90 days, up to one year for Demand Gen and YouTube, and the end date can be pushed back. The budget type can’t be changed once the campaign exists, and an existing campaign can’t switch to a total budget.

It is a holiday budget: 1,500 € for ten days, a bit more on the day trip, less on the rest day, and the money lasts until you get home. For a sale, a launch or any dated event, you think in total amount, without working out a budget per day. Google also says that with account goal settings, a campaign with a total budget doesn’t need a new learning period.

On each search, Google runs a separate auction for each ad location on the page. In each auction, your Ad Rank is calculated twice, first to check whether your ad is eligible, then to place it against the others. It rests on six factors: your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the search, and the expected impact of your assets. Thresholds, set at each auction, go up when ad quality goes down or when the position is higher on the page, and they vary by country, device and the topic of the search. Quality Score sums up that quality in your account; Ad Rank uses the quality measured at auction time.

Think of an orchestra audition. You first need to reach a minimum level to get in, and that level is higher for first violin than for the back row; only then does the jury rank the candidates. A higher quality ad faces lower thresholds, and Google says it often pays less per click. Ad Rank also decides whether your ad can show with assets, such as sitelinks.

It is available for Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. For Search, it gives six statistics: impression share, overlap rate, outranking share, position above rate, top of page rate and absolute top of the page rate. Shopping keeps the first three. An overlap rate of 60% for a competitor means their ad showed 6 times out of 10 when yours showed. Outranking share counts the times you ranked higher than them, or showed when they didn’t. You open the report by checking a campaign, an ad group or a keyword, then selecting "Auction insights". It needs enough activity and shows nothing when impression share is below 10%.

It is the results board of an athletics meeting: you see who you ran against, how often you finished ahead of each one and who passes you in the sprint, but only in the races where you were on the starting line. Google presents it as help for bidding and budget decisions, because it shows where you succeed and where you may be missing opportunities.

To forecast, Performance Planner simulates relevant ad auctions over the last 7 to 10 days, taking into account seasonality, competitor activity and the landing page, and it refreshes its forecasts every day. Forecast conversions follow the "Conversions" column or the conversion goal you pick, whose actions must be set to primary. Since March 9, 2026, it no longer supports Display and Video campaigns, or plans based on impression share. For Search, Shopping and Performance Max, a campaign needs at least 3 clicks, 10 impressions, 1 conversion, some spend in the last 17 days, and no bid strategy change in the last 10 days.

It is the flight simulator of your account: you try the move on the ground before doing it for real. You see the likely effect of a higher budget before your peak season, or what the same spend would bring if split differently, with suggestions to do better for the same spend. Forecasts follow the last few days, and when markets are shifting, Google advises planning weekly rather than monthly or quarterly.

Google Ads offers three options, each with its own syntax. Broad match has no symbol: the ad can show on searches related to the keyword, even when they do not contain its direct meaning. Phrase match goes in quotes ("tennis shoes") and covers searches that include the meaning of the keyword, even when it is implied. Exact match goes in square brackets ([red shoe]) and covers searches with the same meaning or the same intent. If you set no option, a keyword counts as broad match.

Think of a camera zoom: the wide angle shows everything the telephoto shows, plus the scenery around it. Google describes the same logic. A broader match type captures all the searches of the narrower types, and more. Exact match gives you the most control over who sees your ad, on fewer searches; broad match reaches the most, and Google recommends it with Smart Bidding. When a search is identical to an eligible exact match keyword, your Search campaign goes before your other keywords and before Performance Max.

You add it to a campaign or an ad group. With "free" as a negative keyword, you tell Google Ads not to show your ad for any search containing "free". Google also gives the example of a hat company that does not sell baseball hats and adds "baseball hats" as a negative keyword. On the Display Network, your ad is less likely to appear on a site whose content matches your negative keywords. Negative keywords also have a match type (broad, phrase or exact), which behaves differently from positive keywords.

It is the list of streets a flyer distributor skips: every street crossed out saves flyers for the mailboxes that matter. Every excluded search saves your budget for the ones that can bring you customers. Negative keywords also let you keep out content that follows Google’s policies but does not fit your business. Google advises feeding them from the search terms report: when a less relevant search triggered your ad, add it to your negative keywords.

Your keyword is what you choose, the search term is what the person types. Depending on your keyword matching options, the two can differ, and this report shows you the gap: it lists the search terms that a significant number of people used before seeing your ad. Google presents it as the tool to refine your keywords, so that only the right searches cause your ad to show. You find successful phrases to add to your keyword list there, and less relevant searches to add as negative keywords.

It is the detailed statement of your bank card: the balance tells you how much you spent, the lines tell you where. Your keywords sum up what you meant to buy, the report shows the searches that actually triggered your ad. The broader your keywords, the wider that gap can get, and the more the report teaches you: wordings you had not planned, intents close to your offer, and searches that have nothing to do with it.

Broad match has no symbol: you just type the keyword. Google Ads assigns it by default to all your keywords, because it is the most comprehensive type, and it covers all the searches of the matching phrase and exact match keywords, plus other related searches. To keep matches relevant, the system can also look at the user’s recent search activity, the content of your landing pages and assets, and the other keywords in the ad group, which help it understand the intent of each keyword.

It is the bookseller you ask for a book on a low-carb diet, who also shows you his Mediterranean cookbooks: he answers your need, not just the words you said. Google sees more visitors to your website, less time spent on keyword lists and spend focused on the keywords that work. Smart Bidding gets the most out of it, because the wide range of searches lets it learn what works best for you.

By default, all your keywords can match close variants, and there is no way to opt out. For an exact match keyword, close variants include misspellings, singular and plural forms, abbreviations, accents and stemmings ("floor" and "flooring"), reordered words ([shoes mens] and [mens shoes]), adding or removing function words like "for", implied words, synonyms ([bathing suits] for "swimming suits") and the same search intent ([images royalty free] for "free copyright images"). Phrase match follows the same families. The language used is the language of the search terms.

It is the misspelled name on your coffee cup: "Mathew" instead of "Matthew", and it is still your order. Close variants let you reach people looking for your business with words slightly different from yours, without building exhaustive keyword lists with every plural, every typo and every word order. Your list stays short, and the search terms report shows you the searches that actually triggered your ad.

AI Max brings targeting and creative enhancements together. Search term matching expands your keywords to find untapped, performant queries, with broad match, asset-based targeting and keywordless technology. Text customization adapts your headlines and descriptions to your customers’ interests. Final URL expansion increases the relevance of your landing page to the user’s intent. For priority, AI Max matches share the rank of phrase and broad match, behind an exact match keyword that is identical to the search.

It is the shop assistant who understands your request even when you phrase it differently, then takes you straight to the right aisle instead of leaving you at the entrance. Your campaign reaches searches your keyword list had not planned for, with text and a page closer to what the person is looking for. Google states that advertisers that activate AI Max typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS.

You build the list in "Admin", then "Account settings", under "Negative keywords": one word or phrase per line, with the match type you choose (broad, phrase or exact). It applies automatically to Search and Shopping inventory in Search, Performance Max, App, Shopping, Smart and Local campaigns, with a limit of 1,000 negative keywords per account. Google advises adding terms that are close to your keywords but aimed at a different product: a sporting goods store that sells workout clothes excludes "dress pants" or "blouses".

It is the house rules of an apartment building: written once, they apply to every apartment, without copying them door to door. A search your brand never wants to cover (a product you do not sell, or content that follows Google’s policies but does not fit your business) is excluded in one place, for every relevant campaign in the account.

Location options include or exclude people based on where they are likely or regularly located, and on the places they are interested in. "Presence or interest", on by default and recommended, reaches people who are in your areas, regularly there, or interested in them; "Presence" keeps only the first two groups. Interest shows through search terms, a recent visit to the place, or content viewed about the place. Exclusions work in "Presence". These options apply to the Search Network, the Display Network and Demand Gen campaigns; hotel campaigns use only "Presence".

Think of a museum poster: "Presence" puts it up in the city's metro, "Presence or interest" also slips it into the guidebooks read by people planning their trip. According to Google internal data (2022), advertisers in travel, real estate and education who switched from "Presence" to "Presence or interest" get 5 % more conversions on the Search Network. "Presence" still makes sense in a sensitive vertical with strict targeting limits, or when someone outside the area cannot become a customer, as for a neighborhood plumber.

You create a customer list data file from your online and offline data, then upload it. Google finds the Google users in it: when signed in to their account, they see your ads on the Search Network, the "Shopping" tab, YouTube, Gmail and the Display Network. Smart Bidding and optimized targeting can automatically include the account lists you have not applied anywhere (on YouTube today, soon on the Search Network according to Google); you can turn this inclusion off, and it does not apply with manual bidding.

Google files these lists with remarketing, under "your data". The difference is the source: a visitor segment fills up on its own through the Google tag, while a customer list comes from you, offline data included (CRM file, subscribers). You hand your address book to Google's mail carrier, who only delivers to the people on his route, the ones with a Google account. On the Search Network, Google suggests adjusting your bid based on what you know about your customers; on YouTube, targeting segments similar to your most valuable customers.

Under each asset group, the "Audiences" section holds your signals. You add your data (lists of website visitors, app users, customers, people who watched your videos), custom segments built from keywords, URLs or apps, then "Demographics" and "Additional segments": detailed demographics, life events, affinity, in-market. Adding them is optional. They act as suggestions for the machine learning models, which optimize toward the goals you selected. To help learning, Google recommends custom segments based on search terms.

A signal gives learning a starting point: instead of looking for your customers blindly, the algorithm starts from a profile you know. It is the identikit sketch handed to a headhunter. He starts with the candidates who look like it, then also shows you an unexpected profile if it has a good chance of succeeding. For this sketch, Google's page starts with your own data: desktop and mobile visitors, page and social views, past converters.

Optimized targeting turns on automatically. It is available for Display, Demand Gen and Video campaigns with the "Sales", "Leads" or "Website traffic" goals. It looks at information like the keywords on your landing page or in your assets, then finds audiences that can meet the campaign's goals, using real-time conversion data (for example, what people who converted recently searched for). You can give it "targeting signals": audience segments, custom segments, customer data segments, and on Display, keywords and topics. You turn it off in the ad group settings.

You go after new customers beyond your existing segments, and Google recommends it when you want more conversions without raising bids or the cost per customer. Imagine a fisherman you show your favorite spot on the river: he casts his line there first, then moves to wherever the fish are biting. The traffic found this way shows in the "Total: Expansion and optimized targeting" row of your reports, and your brand safety settings, such as content exclusions, still apply.

With "Targeting", you tell Google Ads who to reach or where to show: the ad group serves only to the audiences or on the content you chose, and its reach narrows. With "Observation", reach does not change. Google reports how the selected placements, topics or audiences perform when they fall within your existing targeting, and you can set custom bids or bid adjustments on them. You apply it from the "Edit all targeting" page, never when you first create the ad group. Google recommends "Observation" for all Search campaigns, and targeting for Display campaigns.

Think of a shop with a loyalty card. "Targeting" lets only cardholders in; "Observation" opens to everyone and looks, at the checkout, at what cardholders spend. You learn which audiences convert better without losing a single customer, then you raise or lower the bid on them, or create a dedicated ad group with its own landing page. With Smart Bidding, your first-party audience segments added under "Observation" also act as signals for the strategies.

Content suitability settings filter beyond Google's monetization policies, on YouTube, the Display Network, Google Video Partners and the Search Partner Network depending on your campaign. They are set at the account level, in "Content suitability" under the "Tools" menu. You pick an inventory type ("Maximum inventory", "Moderate inventory" or "Limited inventory"), then refine with exclusions: sensitive content, digital content labels, content types such as live streams, up to 1,000 content keywords, up to 65,000 placements, and themes such as politics or religion.

You keep control over your brand's neighborhood. A winemaker who supplies restaurants does the same: they all hold a license (Google's policies), but he chooses which tables his bottle appears on. "Moderate inventory" excludes strong profanity, dramatized violence and sexually suggestive themes. "Limited inventory" goes further, even into music videos or makeup tutorials, and Google recommends it only for brands with strict requirements, because it may limit your reach and performance.

You enter 3 to 15 headlines (30 characters each) and 2 to 4 descriptions (90 characters each). Google Ads combines them while avoiding repetition, shows at least one headline and one description in each ad, and over time tests the most promising combinations for each query. Text that matches the search can appear in bold, and up to two unused headlines can serve as links, in the space that used to be for sitelinks only. To force a piece of text, you pin it to a position, and only the headline 1, headline 2 and description 1 positions guarantee it shows.

You stock the pantry, and a chef plates a dish for each guest: the more varied the ingredients, the better the fit. With several headlines and descriptions, your ad competes in more auctions and matches more queries. Google advises at least two responsive search ads per ad group, with "Good" or "Excellent" Ad Strength. According to its internal data, going from one to two ads brings on average 6.6% more conversions at a similar cost per conversion.

Ad Strength has two parts: an overall rating ("Incomplete", "Poor", "Average", "Good", "Excellent") and action items that say what to improve. It mainly scores the link between your assets and your keywords. A keyword must fit entirely in one headline, and one longer than 30 characters goes in a description. It also counts the number and variety of headlines and descriptions, and sitelinks, at least 6 at account, campaign or ad group level. It updates every time you change keywords, assets or account structure, and you read it in the "Ad strength" column.

It is a pilot’s checklist before takeoff: it confirms everything is on board, and the quality of the flight is measured once in the air. You use it while creating or editing the ad, to give the system enough material to build the most relevant ad for each query. Google quotes its internal data: advertisers who move from "Poor" to "Excellent" see 15% more conversions on average.

Google Ads calls assets all the pieces of the final ad: headlines and descriptions, which are required, then sitelink, callout, structured snippet, call, location, price, promotion, app or lead form assets. Adding them costs nothing, and a click on one is charged like a click on the ad, with no more than two clicks charged per impression (clicks on seller ratings stay free). Some are added automatically when Google Ads predicts they will improve your performance. The Google Ads API documentation asked developers to migrate the former extensions to assets, and a few help pages still mention "sitelink extensions".

The space above the results works like an end-of-aisle display: room is limited, and the best-placed ads show the most assets there. Your ad gains visibility and more ways to act, like calling or getting directions, which often increases clicks. Google notes that the cost of one more asset is often lower than the cost of moving up one position. It advises at least four asset types, for example sitelinks, callouts, images and one more of your choice.

An asset group gathers the creatives of a Performance Max campaign around a theme or an audience: one final URL, up to 15 headlines, up to 5 long headlines, descriptions, the business name, images, logos and videos. Any asset can be combined with any other asset from the same group, for ads on Google Search, Google Maps, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Google partner websites. If you don’t add a video, Google may generate some from your other assets. For a retailer, the group also holds listing groups, which pick the Merchant Center products included.

It is a theatre company’s costume trunk: one trunk per play, and the AI dresses each scene with what it finds inside. One clear theme per group keeps the ads consistent on every channel. Google recommends basing your groups on the sections or product categories of your website, and covering every asset type (text, images, videos) in each group. The "Ad strength" indicator tells you whether a group has enough.

A Demand Gen campaign serves image, video and carousel ads on YouTube (Shorts included), Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Google Display Network. You can choose channels (YouTube Shorts only for a vertical video, for example), target lookalike segments of your customers, add a Merchant Center product feed and run A/B experiments on your creatives. Its bidding targets clicks, conversions or conversion value. Google is moving its Display campaigns into it: since June 2026, eligible advertisers can migrate with a tool in their account, and later new campaigns will only be created in Demand Gen.

It is the tasting stand in a shopping mall: passers-by did not come for you, and a good visual makes them stop. Demand Gen shows your best-performing visuals to the people most likely to be interested in your brand, even if they are not searching for you yet. Compared with Performance Max, which looks for conversions across all Google channels, it gives you more control over creative testing, audience targeting and placements on YouTube and Discover.

A Shopping campaign uses the product data you send to Merchant Center, instead of keywords, to decide where and how to show your ads: Google matches each product’s attributes to the user’s search. The ad shows on the "Shopping" tab, on Google Search next to the results, on Google Images and, if your campaign includes them, on Google Search Partner websites. You pay per click and bid on product groups, with Target ROAS, Maximize Clicks, Maximize conversion value or Manual CPC. The same feed can also power Performance Max, which adds more channels.

Your catalog becomes a supermarket shelf where Google places each product according to its label. The shopper sees the product and its price before clicking, so they arrive further along in their purchase. One search can show several of your Shopping ads, and a Shopping ad can appear at the same time as a text ad. Product reporting, impression share and the Bid Simulator show you where to grow.

A custom experiment creates a trial campaign next to your original campaign, for Search, Display, Demand Gen or Video. You choose how long it runs and how much of the traffic and budget it gets, you change the variable you want to test, then compare both on the "Experiments" page, with up to 2 primary success metrics. If the experiment wins, you apply it to the original campaign or convert it into a new campaign. The campaign must be active, with an individual daily budget and a standard bid strategy: a shared budget or a portfolio strategy rules it out. Shopping and App campaigns don’t support standard custom experiments.

It is the farmer who tries a new fertilizer on half of the field: the other half, farmed as before, shows what the fertilizer changed. You measure the impact of a change before applying it for good, and only the share of traffic you choose tests it. Google gives the example of a Target ROAS bid change tested for a month, then applied automatically to the original campaign once the gain is confirmed.

Optimization score shows at campaign, account and manager account level, for active campaigns. Google calculates it in real time from your account’s statistics, settings and status, the impact of available recommendations and your recent recommendation history. Each recommendation shows the score uplift it brings, from under 0.1% to 100%, and applying a 5% recommendation raises the score by 5%. The score follows the goal inferred from your bid strategy, and you choose which conversions count with the "Include in ‘Conversions’" setting.

Think of the "profile 80% complete" gauge on a social network: it rises with every field you fill in, and the number of clients the profile brings you is counted elsewhere. The score gives you a list of suggestions sorted by estimated impact, to review one by one against your data. An account’s health shows in its conversions, their cost and their value, against your goals.

The Conversions API creates a connection between your marketing data (website or app events, messaging events, offline conversions) and Meta's systems, straight from your server, website platform, app or CRM. Meta processes these server events like the ones sent by the Meta Pixel. The recommended setup is redundant: the same events go through both the Pixel and the API, and Meta deduplicates them. For that, the event ID and the event name must match on both sides.

The Pixel depends on the browser, and Meta acknowledges it can lose events due to network connectivity issues or page loading errors. The API sends the same ones from your server, like a second line that takes over when the first one drops. Meta presents it as a way to optimize ad targeting, decrease cost per result and measure outcomes. When both versions of an event arrive within 5 minutes of each other, Meta keeps the browser one.

CPM divides what you spent by the number of impressions, then multiplies by 1,000: 633 € for 1,164,896 impressions gives 0.54 €. Meta defines it as the average cost for 1,000 impressions, and bills campaigns optimized for sales, leads or reach per impression. At Google, Max. CPM bidding is gone: viewable CPM (vCPM) only charges viewable impressions, meaning a display ad with 50% of it on screen for one second or more, and you select it on a « Display Network only » campaign.

CPM is the price of attention. Think of a poster in a train station: you pay for the crowd that walks past, whether people stop or not. On Meta, it also shows what you ask the algorithm for, since it calculates its bid with the probability of reaching your goal: on one store, a sales campaign paid 5.5 times more per impression than a reach campaign. And it breaks down: CPM = CPC × CTR × 1,000.

It is your Monday morning checklist, except it runs by itself. A Google Ads script is a JavaScript program written in the account's editor: you paste it in the Scripts section, authorize it, schedule it (once, daily, weekly or monthly, at the hour you pick), and it watches your budgets, spots disapproved ads, suggests negative keywords or builds a report. An account script stops after 30 minutes. At manager account (MCC) level, one script can access all the managed accounts, and process up to 50 of them in parallel.

A check you do by hand always ends up skipping a week. The script shows up every time, and it warns you the same day a budget drifts or an ad gets disapproved. An account can hold up to 250 authorized scripts: each recurring check can have its own, and on a manager account, a single script covers your whole portfolio.

Server-side tagging adds a second Google Tag Manager container, hosted in a cloud environment, next to the web container installed on your site. The browser sends events to this server container, which you own, and it then forwards them to Google, Meta or your other tools. Until you choose to send the data elsewhere, you are the only one with access to it. Set up in a first-party context, under your own domain, it keeps site data and cookies within that domain.

Picture an airlock between your site and the ad platforms: every piece of data goes through it before leaving, and you hold the door. In the server container you can remove personal information before passing it to marketing partners, and you decide the shape and destination of each piece of data. Cookies set from your server can also carry the HttpOnly flag, which, according to Google, makes them more durable and more secure.

Consent mode passes each visitor's cookie choice to Google, and Google tags adjust their behavior to that choice. It doesn't provide the banner: your consent management platform shows it and passes the information along. It comes in two versions. In basic mode, nothing is sent to Google until the visitor accepts, not even the refusal. In advanced mode, tags send cookieless pings when consent is denied, and Google uses them to model the conversions it can't observe.

In the European Economic Area, Google requires you to collect consent and pass these signals on to keep measuring, personalizing ads and running remarketing. Consent mode is the channel that carries them. The two versions don't model the same way: basic mode relies on a general model, advanced mode on a model specific to your account. According to Google, users who consent are typically 2 to 5 times more likely to convert than those who don't, which is why Google models the relationship between the two groups instead of extrapolating from the first one.

Google defines first-party data as information a customer shares directly with you: on your website, in your app, in store, through offline conversions, wherever they interact with your business. You can load it into ad platforms. At Google, Customer Match uses it to reach your customers across Search, the Shopping tab, Gmail, YouTube and Display. At Meta, a customer file builds a Custom Audience, and the data must be shared hashed.

This is data you own, and it serves measurement as much as targeting: enhanced conversions, for example, send first-party conversion data hashed with the SHA256 algorithm for more accurate measurement. Google describes it as essential to fuel AI and accurate measurement. And Chrome has not removed third-party cookies: in 2024, Google dropped that plan and left the choice to users. Its value lies in where it comes from: your real customers.

BigQuery is Google Cloud's fully managed data platform: you store tables there and query them in SQL, with no server to run. GA4 can export all its raw events to it, and the Data Transfer Service copies your Google Ads reports every day, with a 7-day refresh window by default. Your CRM arrives as a file. On pricing, the first 1 TiB of queries and the first 10 GiB of storage are free each month, per billing account.

This is where ad spend and the sale end up on the same line. A query can link a campaign's cost to the revenue signed in your CRM, something no interface does on its own. Without it, you compare an ad cost to a form, never to a signed customer. And since Google states that data exported from GA4 can't be exported again, every day that lands in BigQuery becomes history you keep.

Enhanced conversions add to the conversion you already measure. When a customer converts, the first-party data entered on your site, such as their email, name, address or phone number, is hashed with the SHA256 algorithm, sent to Google in that form, then matched with the Google accounts that were signed in when they engaged with your ad. It exists for web and for leads: starting in June 2026, Google combines the two into a single feature with a simple on/off switch.

Some conversions slip past the tag alone. By matching hashed data with Google accounts, enhanced conversions help recover them: Google presents the feature as a way to improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement and unlock more powerful bidding. The data stays protected by one-way hashing, so Google receives a fingerprint and never the address in plain text. Allow about 30 days before you see its impact in your reports.

Google Tag Manager is a tag management system: you add two code snippets to each page of your site, once, then manage all your tags from the interface. The set of tags, triggers and variables installed on a site is called a container. A tag sends information to a tool (Google Ads, GA4, Meta), a trigger is the rule that decides when it fires, and the data layer is a JavaScript object that temporarily stores what the visitor does. Nothing changes on the site until you publish your changes.

It is the dashboard of your tracking: instead of asking a developer to add each tracking code, you add, edit and test them yourself. Preview and debug mode lets you browse your site as if the draft were already live, so you check before you publish. And each publication creates a version, a snapshot of the container that lets you roll back if a change breaks something.

GA4 brings together your website and app data, and measures it through events rather than sessions. An event measures a specific interaction: a page view, a click, a submitted form, a purchase. The ones that matter to your business are called key events, and the word « conversion » now means an action you use to measure your campaigns and optimize your bidding. Once processed, the data is stored in a database where it can't be changed.

This is where you understand what visitors do after the click, and where your buyers come from. The event model follows a customer's journey from site to app. And since data can't be changed once processed, what you set up today decides what you will be able to read tomorrow: a forgotten event can't be recovered afterwards. Custom events don't show up in most standard reports: you need custom reports or explorations to analyze them.

Firebase brings together the services a team needs to run an app: user sign-in, databases, storage, push notifications, crash reports, and Google Analytics. A Firebase project is a Google Cloud project with extra Firebase settings, and the iOS and Android versions of the same app each become a data stream in the same GA4 property. For an advertiser, the key piece is the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK: it collects events inside the app, like the first open or a purchase made through the stores, which you can then import into Google Ads as conversions.

On Android, the Google Play link already tracks downloads, Google Play purchases and pre-registrations with no code. Everything else, the first open, the return to the app, a sign-up, goes through Firebase or a third-party app analytics tool. That is the difference between buying installs and buying users: an App campaign can only bid on what you send back to it. On iOS, Google's on-device conversion measurement also runs through this SDK.

The GCLID (Google Click Identifier) is a URL parameter passed with clicks on your ads: it identifies the campaign and the other attributes of the click, for tracking and attribution. It appears when auto-tagging is turned on, and it is required for website conversion tracking. Sometimes it is created at the impression: if the person clicks the same ad again, the same GCLID is reused. To measure without identifying people, Google also uses two other parameters: GBRAID for clicks tied to app conversions, WBRAID for web conversions.

It is the thread that ties a sale to a click, even when the sale closes far from the site. To import offline conversions, a signed quote or a call, Google requires auto-tagging: you keep the GCLID from the form all the way to your CRM, then send the sale back with it. The original click has to stay within the conversion window, which you can set from 1 to 90 days depending on the source.

A custom variable gives a conversion event a dimension specific to your business: the project type of a loan request, the product range, the budget bracket of a quote request. There are two ways to create one. Either you add a parameter to your conversion tracking tag: Google Ads picks it up on its own, and you then need to "activate" it in the account for the data to be recorded. Or you add it as a column to the offline conversions you import. Once activated, it segments your reports within a few hours.

Google Ads tells you how many forms a campaign brought in, not which ones. With a variable, you see which keywords bring the big projects and which bring the small ones, while the Conversions column shows the same number for both. Google's own example is a hotel chain that splits its bookings by hotel, room price category and loyalty status, to learn which generic keywords lead to the most expensive rooms.

Your purchase tag sends, with every order, the list of items sold: their ID, price and quantity. Google links each item to your Merchant Center feed and produces reports the conversion alone cannot give you: number of orders, average cart size, revenue, and even gross profit if your feed carries the cost of goods sold. Only sales of items from a Merchant Center account linked to the Google Ads account are processed.

The standard report tells you a purchase happened; cart data tells you what the customer bought. You see which campaigns sell the most and at what margin, whether location or device changes cart size, and whether the customer bought the advertised product or something else from your store. That is what lets you, in Google's words, raise bids on the products that drive higher-value purchases.

When someone clicks your ad, the landing page URL carries the details of that click. The conversion linker tag detects them and stores them in first-party cookies on your domain, the _gcl_* ones such as _gcl_aw, and in the browser's local storage. When the visitor converts further along, the conversion tag finds that click and links the conversion to it. Google recommends firing it on "All Pages". It can also carry the click across several of your domains, by adding a parameter to the links that lead there.

The click lands on one page, and the conversion often happens on another, sometimes much later in the visit. With no trace of the click in between, the conversion tag has nothing left to link to. One point Google's documentation makes clear: if your container already loads a Google tag on every page, it does not also need a conversion linker tag, and a container with Google Ads tags loads one automatically before sending its events.

An ad does not always lead to an online sale: often it starts a journey that ends by phone, in a meeting or with a signed contract. You keep the click ID, the GCLID, with the lead in your CRM, then send Google Ads that GCLID, the conversion type and its date when the lead converts. On the API side, these imports go through the Data Manager API since June 15, 2026, and Google advises anyone starting out to choose enhanced conversions for leads instead, its upgraded version, which relies on user-provided data such as the email address.

Without import, Google Ads optimizes on the form that was filled, and a curious visitor's form counts as much as a future customer's. With import, every stage of your CRM can become a conversion, from qualified lead to signed contract, and the algorithm learns from what actually pays. Google reports a median 10% increase in conversions for advertisers who add first-party data to their imported GCLIDs, compared to standard offline imports.

A UTM parameter is added to the end of a URL, after a question mark: utm_source names the origin (newsletter, linkedin), utm_medium the medium (email, social, cpc), utm_campaign the campaign. Google asks you to always use these three; utm_term, utm_content and utm_id add the keyword, the creative and the campaign ID. GA4 shows these values in the « Traffic acquisition » report, and removes them from the landing page dimensions: the full link is in « Page location ».

It is the tag on the suitcase: the GA4 sorting belt reads it to put each visit into a channel, email, social networks, AI assistant. Its rules read the source and the medium, ignore case and cannot be edited. With the tag, a visit from a QR code or a newsletter has a name, and you compare your campaigns outside Google Ads in the same report. On Google Ads, auto-tagging and its GCLID take priority over UTM parameters in GA4.

Looker Studio took back its original name, Data Studio, in April 2026, and lookerstudio.google.com redirects to datastudio.google.com. Three pieces fit together: the connector fetches data from a platform (Google's own, for Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Sheets or Search Console, are free), the data source sets the account, the fields and the credentials, and the report places charts, filters and the date range control on top. The data stays on its platform: Data Studio keeps a temporary copy, refreshed every 12 hours for Google Ads.

It is a shop window placed in front of your tools: whoever reads the report sees the numbers without opening the ad platform, and without access to your account when the report uses owner's credentials. For a partner, a network or a client, one page replaces five tabs, and the data control turns a report into a template that fills up with each account's numbers.

In Google Ads, your conversion actions are grouped into conversion goals, and each one gets a status there. A primary action is counted in the "Conversions" column and used for bidding, as long as the standard goal it belongs to is used for bidding. A secondary action is for observation only: it feeds the "All conversions" column, never bidding. The one exception is a custom goal, where every action is used for bidding whatever its status. You find the setting under "Goals", "Conversions", "Summary", then "Edit goal", in the "Conversion action optimization" section.

Think of a contest with a jury and an audience. Primary actions are the judges: their scores make the ranking, so they tell Smart Bidding what to go after. Secondary actions are the audience: you hear their reactions in your reports, and they don’t change the result. Google points it out, the algorithm relies on these signals, and a wrong setting can stop it from optimizing effectively. You can track ten micro-actions without blurring the target, as long as the action that matters for your business stays primary.

Before buying, people often click several of your ads. Data-driven attribution compares the paths of customers who convert with the paths of those who don’t, spots the interactions that make a conversion more likely and gives them more credit. It looks at clicks and video engagements on Search (including Shopping), YouTube, Display and Demand Gen, and each model is specific to one advertiser. It is the default model for most conversion actions, chosen in the "Attribution model" menu, option "Data-driven".

In football, last click gives the goal to the scorer alone; this model rewatches the match and also credits the assist. In Google’s example, people who first click "Bike tour New York" and later "Bike tour Brooklyn waterfront" buy more often than those who only click the second ad, so the first one gets some credit back. If you use an automated bid strategy, it uses this information. That explains the decimals in your columns: 0.33 or 0.50 conversions is one conversion shared between several clicks.

The conversion window is the time after an ad interaction during which a conversion, such as a purchase, is recorded in Google Ads. You set it for each conversion action, and there are three of them. Click-through: 30 days by default, from 1 to 30, 60 or 90 days depending on the conversion source, and Google recommends at least 7 days. Engaged-view, after a video engagement: 3 days by default, adjustable from 1 to 30 days. View-through: 1 day by default, adjustable from 1 to 30 days or 1 to 4 weeks.

It is a net left in the water for a set time: a fish that arrives after it is pulled out still exists, it just isn’t counted. To set the length, check the time lag report in your attribution reports. If 75% of your conversions happen between day 25 and day 30, your window should cover at least those 30 days. Smart Bidding strategies count and optimize conversions for the window you choose, so this setting also decides what the algorithm learns from.

A conversion value rule changes the value of a conversion when a condition is met. Conditions cover audience (your first-party lists or Google’s), location or device, with a no-condition option for store visits and store sales. Each rule can combine a primary and a secondary condition. For example, if all your leads are worth 5 € in Google Ads but leads from one region are worth 10 €, a rule multiplies their value by 2. The adjusted value shows in the "Conversion value" column, with no change to your tag code, on Search, Shopping, Display and Performance Max.

It is the weighting in an exam: the same grade counts more in one subject than in another. You give Google information your account doesn’t hold yet, such as a higher margin on one type of customer or a higher lifetime value. Target ROAS and Maximize Conversion Value use it in real time, at every auction, and then optimize toward your real goal (revenue, profit, lifetime value) rather than one value for everyone.

Often Google sees the ad interaction and the conversion, but not the link between them: browsers that block third-party cookies such as Safari and Firefox, limited first-party cookie lifetime, visitors who refuse cookies through consent mode, journeys that move from one device to another. Modeling determines whether a Google ad interaction led to the conversion, never whether the conversion happened. It relies on observable slices with similar behavior. The result goes into the "Conversions" column, alongside observed conversions and at the same level of detail.

Picture a jigsaw puzzle with a few missing pieces: the pattern around them is enough to tell what they showed, without adding pieces that don’t exist. Without modeling, your reports would only show the observable share, and automated bidding would neglect the visitors it can’t see converting. Google says it aims for the real number of conversions without going over, and checks its models against observed conversions held back. The more observed data it has, through the Google tag, consent mode and enhanced conversions, the better the model.

The "View-through conversions" column counts conversions on your site after someone saw your ad without interacting with it. On the Display Network, credit goes to the last viewable impression, and Active View technology treats an impression as viewable when at least 50% of the ad is on screen for at least one second. For video, credit goes to the last impression of the ad. A video view (30 seconds, the full ad if it is shorter, or a click) that leads to a conversion goes into "Conversions", not here. Google automatically excludes conversions from people who also interacted with another of your ads, and the view-through conversion window is 1 day by default.

It is the poster on the subway platform: nobody touches it, and yet some people walk into the store the next day. A Display or video campaign judged only on its clicks seems to bring little, while part of its effect comes from what it shows. Google presents these conversions as a way to track the value of these campaigns, and they follow your conversion action settings, such as how conversions are counted.

In a standard setup, the visitor’s browser talks directly to Google, which infers their location from their IP address. With Google tag gateway for advertisers, the browser talks to your domain (your CDN, CMS or load balancer), which then forwards the tag requests to Google. Automated integrations (Cloudflare One-Click, Webflow, Google Cloud Load Balancer, Akamai) usually handle location on their own. In a manual implementation, on AWS CloudFront for example, it is up to you to add the geolocation headers (preferably X-Forwarded-CountryRegion) and to forward the visitor’s true IP address.

Think of mail sent from your own mailbox: it does leave from your home, but the sorting center only sees your post office’s stamp, hence the town you write on the envelope. Google presents it as a gain in accuracy that protects privacy: it only processes the Google first-party cookies needed for measurement and drops the others. Its developer documentation recommends it alongside server-side tagging, for the most durable setup.

Conversion Lift is the incrementality tool in Google Ads: it measures the purchases, site visits and other conversions directly driven by people seeing your ads. Your audience is split into two groups, the treatment group that sees your ads and the control group that doesn’t, and the difference in conversions between them gives the lift. There are two study types. Based on users, with groups built from aggregated user attributes, which you can segment by age or gender. Based on geography, with groups built from aggregated geographic data, and support for offline data.

It is a clinical trial for your advertising: one group gets the treatment, the other doesn’t, and only the gap between them measures the effect. Attribution shares the credit for measured conversions between your ads; Conversion Lift answers another question, how many conversions the presence of your ads added. Google turns it into metrics such as incremental conversions, incremental cost per action and incremental ROAS, reported if your conversion actions have values.

Google Analytics 4 counts an engaged session as soon as it meets one of three criteria: it lasts longer than 10 seconds, it has a key event, or it has 2 or more page or screen views. Engagement rate is the share of those sessions, and bounce rate is its opposite, the share of sessions that were not engaged. Google’s help takes the example of a visitor who reads for under 10 seconds, triggers no event, visits no other page and leaves: if it is the only session on the site, engagement rate is 0 % and bounce rate is 100 %. By default, most reports do not show these two metrics. You add them by customizing a detail report, with an Editor or Administrator role.

It is the doorman who notes who walks out without crossing the lobby: he does not say why, he counts. On paid traffic, read this number next to the ad that brought the visitor. An ad that promises a price and a page that does not show it send the visitor away in under 10 seconds, and each paid click leaves having seen nothing. Compared campaign by campaign and page by page, bounce rate shows where the promise of the ad and the page part ways.

ROAS (return on ad spend) divides the value of your conversions by what you spent. You put 1,000 € into Google Ads and it brings in 4,000 € of revenue: your ROAS is 4, or 400%. In Google Ads, the column that shows it is called « Conv. value / cost ». The number depends entirely on the value you report through conversion tracking: the sale amount, or your margin if you choose to send that instead.

It is the metric that tells you at a glance what each euro of advertising brings back, and it compares easily from one campaign to another. It is also what Target ROAS steers: the strategy aims for an average value per euro spent. Keep it apart from ROI, which Google defines as the ratio of your net profit to your costs: two campaigns with the same ROAS can leave very different profits.

100 € sale, 60 € product cost, 20 € ads: ROAS = 5, POAS = 2. Same campaign, two stories: ROAS looks at revenue, POAS looks at what you keep.

On a catalog with mixed margins, two campaigns at the same ROAS can have opposite profitability. POAS aligns your bidding with real profit.

Break-even ROAS = 1 / gross margin. 40 % margin: floor at 2.5. 25 % margin: floor at 4. The first number to set before judging any campaign.

Without a floor, a "good ROAS" does not exist: a ROAS of 3 is profitable at 40 % margin and losing money at 25 %. This threshold turns the ROAS column into a decision.

100,000 € of revenue, 20,000 € of ads across all channels: MER = 5. Every ad euro generates 5 € of revenue, no matter whether Google or Meta claims the sale.

Platforms often claim the same conversions. If your platform ROAS climbs while your MER declines, they are claiming sales that would have happened anyway.

Acquisition spend / new customers. Store with an 80 € average order and 40 % margin: above a 32 € CAC, the first order does not pay you back; customer lifetime value decides whether you can accept it.

A stable CPA can hide a degrading CAC when the share of repeat purchases grows: the account looks healthy while acquiring new customers gets more and more expensive.

600 € LTV, 150 € CAC: ratio of 4. Benchmarks: ≥ 3 profitable, = 1 break-even, < 1 every acquired customer loses you money.

It is the global ROAS of the customer relationship, not of one campaign. It allows (or forbids) acquiring customers at a loss on the first order to recover over time.

LTV (lifetime value, also called CLV) is calculated like this: average order value × purchases per year × relationship length in years. To set a budget, the useful version is margin LTV, multiplied by your gross margin rate. Google Analytics 4 has its own measure: its lifetime value (LTV) adds up revenue from purchases on your site or app, minus refunds, and its « Average 120d value » looks at the first 120 days of each user. In Google Ads, customer lifecycle goals let you bid higher for a new customer, and the « New customer lifetime value » column shows the value added to those first orders.

Judging a customer on their first order is like judging a fruit tree on its first harvest. LTV looks at every season: it sets the acquisition cost you can accept, and it separates two channels with the same cost per sale, when one brings customers who come back and the other brings one-time buyers.

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. Google describes its pieces in its visual elements gallery: a text result has an attribution (the site name, the favicon, the visible URL, sometimes a breadcrumb), a title link that leads to the page, and a snippet, the description or summary of the result. Google says that how these elements look changes over time, and that the same result displays differently depending on the device, the country and the language of the query. The title and the snippet have no set length: Google truncates them to fit the width of the screen, and it chooses the snippet, using the meta description when it describes the page better than the rest of its content.

The SERP is a street of shop windows where each shop gets a few inches: the passer-by compares the name, the title and two lines, then walks into one of them. Your ad and your page are judged side by side with your competitors’, in one second. What shows in those few inches decides the click, before the page even counts.

« Save 50 € » converts less than « Do not lose your 50 € discount ». A cart countdown, « only 2 left in stock », a free trial ending: all of it triggers the fear of losing, which drives more than the desire to gain.

Understanding this bias changes how you write an ad or an offer: you frame the message around what the prospect risks missing, not only what they gain.

A crossed-out price of 199 € before the real 99 € makes 99 € look cheap, because 199 € became your anchor. Without the anchor, 99 € might have looked expensive.

Anchoring shapes a pricing page, a quote, a negotiation. Showing the premium offer first anchors high and makes the standard offer look reasonable.

« 12,000 customers », star ratings, known brand logos, « 8 people are viewing this product »: all signals that say « others trusted this, you can too ». The brain takes a shortcut instead of judging alone.

One of the strongest conversion levers on a page. Placed well, next to the action button, social proof removes the last hesitation.

Google defines it as a program or system that trains a model from data, to make useful predictions on new data. Where a developer codes a function by hand, a model learns its parameters during training. You don't program « if the user is 25-34, bid higher »: you show the algo thousands of past conversions, and it figures out on its own which profiles convert, often combinations a human wouldn't have guessed.

It is what powers Smart Bidding: according to Google, its algorithms train on data at a vast scale to predict how each bid amount affects your conversions. It also builds GA4's predictive audiences, provided at least 1,000 returning users met the target condition and 1,000 others didn't. The cleaner the data it gets, the better its predictions hold, which is why Google recommends judging Smart Bidding on at least 30 conversions.

Trained on billions of texts, it learns the regularities of language. You write a prompt, it generates the most likely continuation, word after word. From this mechanism come summary, translation, writing, code.

For a marketer: writing ads at scale, analyzing customer verbatims, sorting search terms, brainstorming angles. A productivity lever, with your judgment still in charge.

The algo serves, sees who converts, adjusts, serves better, watches again. Every reported conversion feeds the loop. Broken tracking or false conversions, and the loop learns the wrong pattern.

This is why reliable tracking is a direct competitive edge: a competitor with better data trains a better algo, and the gap widens on its own over time.

Five groups, always in the same order: innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%). To place a topic, listen to the word people use. When the word was « Large Language Model », only innovators talked about it. Then it became « generative AI », then « AI », and today « ask the AI »: the topic has reached the majority.

In advertising, a new placement has few advertisers, so the entry cost is often low. It rises as the majority arrives. Knowing where a channel sits on the curve helps you pick the moment to test it, with a test budget and clean measurement.

OpenAI's Advertiser API manages campaigns, ad groups, ads, product feeds, conversion tracking and reporting. In each ad group, you describe in sentences the products, use cases or needs your offer covers: these are context hints, up to 2,000 per ad group. OpenAI states that they are not exact-match keywords, and that they don't replace geographic, platform or audience targeting. The ad title fits in 50 characters, the body in 100.

It is a new placement where intent is expressed in conversation. Context hints supply context instead of fixing a list of queries: you describe your customer's situation, and that information adds to what your ad and landing page already say. Platform targeting lets you choose the ChatGPT surfaces where the campaign can deliver.