25/03/2025
I was in a brand new Google Ads account tonight setting up conversion tracking and discovered a couple new options when creating a conversion action to track lead form submissions.
For context I had already created a GA4 property and linked that property to the Ads account.
So what did I find?
In the first screenshot you can see there is a message that reads: "Google Analytics will measure conversions you create or import for this website domain. New conversions will also be available to use in Google Ads."
There is an option next to this message to click "Use Google Ads only"
I thought about this and the way this is worded leads me to believe/hope the conversion is being created and tracked on the Ads account side, and then shared with the linked Analytics account.
So I left this alone and continued on to the next step in setting up the conversion action.
The settings in the next screen really surprised me because along with all the normal settings there are two new fields highlighting the "GA4 event" name and "GA4 property name".
I finished creating this conversion action and when I went to the summary page I was stunned to see that the conversion action I just created was in fact sourcing data from GA4 and pulling it into the ads account.
So to test this I created a second version of this same conversion action, and in this second version I selected the "Use Google Ads only" option.
By doing this the rest of the set up was the same as it has been in the past, with no mention of a GA4 event or property name.
And when I was done creating this second conversion action it indicated it was pulling conversion data from the website and passing it directly to the Ads account.
Bottom line?
As of today it looks like the default settings for creating a conversion action in Google Ads will create the conversion action in GA4 and pull the relevant conversion data into the Ads account.
If you prefer the old method of creating a conversion action in the Ads account (which I do for multiple reasons) and having that conversion dat sent directly to the Ads account then you need to make sure you select "Use Google Ads only" when creating a new conversion action.
Where will this all end up?
Too soon to tell, but sadly it looks like Google’s long game is to push everyone into using GA4 for conversion tracking across the board.
I hope I’m wrong but only time will tell.
