Track app conversions with Firebase

30/11/2019

Once you’ve linked your Google Ads and Firebase accounts, you can import conversions from Firebase to see how your ad campaigns drive app installs and in-app actions for your Android or iOS apps. 

This article will tell you what you need to do before importing conversions from Firebase, and then explain the setup instructions.

Before you begin

Before you can import your conversions from Firebase, a variety of different items are required to set up tracking, including the following:

  • A Firebase project: The Google Account you use for Google Ads needs to be an owner on a Firebase project. Learn more about getting started with Firebase.
  • Firebase SDK installed in your apps: Learn how to use the Firebase SDK with your apps.
  • Link Firebase and Google Ads: You’ll need at least one Firebase project linked to your Google Ads account.
  • Conversion events set up in Firebase: You can import any event set up as a conversion event in Firebase. First opens, in-app purchases, and ecommerce events are automatically enabled as conversion events. To track other events as conversions, you’ll need to enable these events as conversions in Firebase. You can have a maximum of 10 conversion events per app in Firebase.
  • An app store ID entered for iOS apps in Firebase: If you haven’t entered the Apple app store ID for your iOS projects, you won’t see conversion events for those projects in Google Ads. To add an app store ID, open Firebase, find your iOS app in the “Overview” screen, and select “Manage” from the 3-dot menu.

If you use cross-account conversion tracking to track conversions in a manager account, you’ll need to link Firebase with the manager account and import conversions there.

Instructions

The new Google Ads experience is now the exclusive way for most users to manage their accounts. If you’re still using the previous AdWords experience, choose “previous” below. Learn more

How to import conversion actions from Firebase

  1. Sign in to your AdWords account.
  2. Click the Tools tab, and select Conversions from the drop-down menu.
  3. In the menu on the left, select Firebase.
  4. You should now see a screen with settings and your Firebase conversion events. If you don’t, make sure you’ve linked Firebase and AdWords.
  5. Click Firebase attribution. This setting lets you select when to report a conversion in AdWords if there have been clicks on ads from multiple ad networks. For more information, see About Firebase attribution below. Select an option (or leave the default selected) and click Save.
  6. Below "Import Firebase conversion events," you'll see a table with the Firebase events you can import. If you don't see all your Firebase conversion events here, make sure you've linked the Firebase projects for the events you want to import.
  7. Select the conversion events you want to import.
  8. Click Import.

You’ve now imported your conversion events, and they’ll be tracked as conversion actions in AdWords. To edit the settings for your new conversion actions, follow the instructions below.

How to edit your conversion action settings

Now that you’ve imported conversion events, they’ll be listed as conversion actions in your “Conversion actions” table.

  1. In the “Conversion actions” table (if you’re not already there, click the Tools tab and select Conversions), click on the name of the Firebase conversion action you want to edit.
  2. You'll see a page with the current settings for this conversion action. Click Edit settings.
  3. Make any changes you'd like. (See below for the settings you can edit for each kind of conversion action.) Then, click Save.

For some settings, you may see an alert that your settings are different in Firebase than in AdWords. It’s OK to have different settings in each product, but keep in mind that the conversion data reported in AdWords and Firebase may be different.

The settings you can edit vary depending on whether you’re tracking first opens, automatically tracked in-app purchases, or other events. See the list of settings for each below. 

Settings for first opens

  • Name: Enter a name for the conversion action you'd like to track. This will help you recognize this conversion action later in conversion reports. 

  • Value: Enter a value for each install, or select "Don't assign a value" if you'd prefer not to track one. Learn more about conversion values.

  • Include in "Conversions": Uncheck this setting (selected by default for iOS, not selected by default for Android) if you don’t want to include data for this conversion action in your "Conversions" reporting column (or automated bid strategies that use that column). You can uncheck this setting if you use an automated bid strategy to optimize for conversions, and want to choose which conversion actions to include in that bid strategy. You should only include one conversion action per event per app, to avoid counting duplicate conversions. Learn more about "Include in 'Conversions.'"

Note: The first open event should be the one conversion event per app that you set to yes.

Settings for automatically tracked in-app purchases

  • Name: Enter a name for the conversion action you'd like to track. This will help you recognize this conversion action later in conversion reports.
  • Count: Select whether to count every or one conversion per ad click. Learn more about counting conversions.
  • Conversion window: Select how long to track conversions after someone clicks an ad. Learn more about conversion windows.
  • Include in “Conversions”: Uncheck this setting (selected by default) if you don’t want to include data for this conversion action in your "Conversions" reporting column. You might want to uncheck this setting if you use an automated bid strategy to optimize for conversions, and you don't want to include this particular conversion action in your bid strategy. Learn more about "Include in 'Conversions.'"

Note: Automatically tracked in-app purchases are tracked by default in Firebase. All other conversion actions can be tracked according to your settings, but this requires manual implementation.

Settings for all other conversion actions (including ecommerce events)

  • Name: Enter a name for the conversion action you'd like to track. This will help you recognize this conversion action later in conversion reports.
  • Value: The value of each conversion event is tracked in Firebase and will be automatically imported into Google Ads. You can also set a default value in Google Ads. Keep in mind that in Firebase you need to send the value as a number to report conversions in Google Ads. Learn more about conversion values.
  • Count: Select whether to count every or one conversion per ad click. "Every" is best for sales; "One" is best for leads. Learn more about counting conversions.
  • Conversion window: Select how long to track conversions after someone clicks an ad. Learn more about conversion windows.
  • Category: Select the category that best describes your conversion. You can use this category to segment your conversion reports.
  • Include in “Conversions”: Uncheck this setting (selected by default) if you don’t want to include data for this conversion action in your "Conversions" reporting column. You might want to uncheck this setting if you use an automated bid strategy to optimize for conversions, and you don't want to include this particular conversion action in your bid strategy. Learn more about "Include in 'Conversions.'"

About Firebase attribution

If you use multiple ad networks to advertise your app, then Firebase attribution reporting will also credit other networks to your conversions, if you have configured the networks under Network settings in the UI. Google Ads will only report conversions that involved a click on an ad. The “Firebase attribution” setting lets you further define which conversions Google Ads can take credit for, which as a result will show in your Google Ads reporting section. There are 2 options:

  • Report all conversions with a Google Ads click, even if there are later clicks on other ad networks. Select this option if you want to report any conversion that involved a Google Ads click. This is the default option, because it means you’ll see every conversion that your Google Ads campaigns had a part in.
  • Report only conversions where the last click was on an ad. Select this option if you don’t want Google Ads to report conversions where the last click was on another ad network’s ad, even though there were Google Ads clicks earlier in the customer’s path to conversion. In this option, the conversion will be credited to whichever ad network the user clicked last.

About duplicate conversions

If you have multiple app conversion actions that appear to be tracking app installs for the same app, then you’ll see a warning in the “Include in ‘Conversions’” setting for your conversion actions. If these are tracking the same version of your app, it’s recommended that you uncheck “Include in ‘Conversions’” for all but one of the conversion actions. That way, Google Ads will only count one conversion per app install in the “Conversions” column. This is especially important if you use an automated bid strategy to optimize for conversions: it will help you avoid bidding for 2 conversions for the same app install.

If the code for the 2 conversion actions is installed in different versions of your app, you don’t need to remove one from the “Conversions” column. If you’re transitioning from using the Google Ads SDK to Firebase, see the note below.

Note: Due to limited visibility, you won’t see conversions reported in Google Ads for iOS Search campaigns.

Note: Transition from the Google Ads SDK to Firebase

If you’re currently using the Google Ads SDK, it’s recommended that you switch to using Firebase, because this is Google's recommended solution for conversion tracking. Here’s how to go about installing the new conversion code:

As we mention above, add the Firebase SDK and remove the Google Ads SDK from a new version of your app. You can include both the Firebase and the Google Ads SDK conversion actions in the “Conversions” column. Your older conversion action will continue to count conversions for the previous version of your app, while the Firebase conversion action will count conversions for the new version of your app.

* Nguồn: Google