Determine Account-Id for Offline Conversion Upload?

[Christopher Parotat]

Hi,

We are collection conversions for users from multiple Adwords accounts in our database and use heuristics (like the user's language) to determine the account-id to upload the conversions to.

But the guessed account-id is often incorrect and we get a "OfflineConversionError.UNAUTHORIZED_USER" error.

Is there a way to get the account-id from the Gclid alone or maybe change the auto-tagging settings to include the account-id?

We do not want to setup and use cross-account conversion tracking.

Or can we just send the conversion to all of the accounts simultaneously and ignore all the errors? But that feels quite wrong.

Regards,
Christopher

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Christopher,

Thank you for reaching out.

When getting the OfflineConversionError.UNAUTHORIZED_USER, it is recommend to generate the Click Performance Report in order to very that the GCLID you are uploading indeed belongs to the customer ID that you will specify in your request header.

In addition, you may also refer to our validation rules guide in order to ensure successful conversion uploads. I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Peter Laurence Napa Oliquino Google Ads API Team

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[Christopher Parotat]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the reply. I studied the conversion-tracking tips and noticed that it is already possible to send the master-account without having to use cross-account conversion tracking.

I have tried uploading conversions to the master account but got an "INVALID_CONVERSION_TYPE" error in both cases. According to the validation-rules section you have linked that is expected as we do not have Conversion-Trackers configured in the master-account.

Quote:

> The UploadConversion existed in the effective conversion account of the click's Google Ads account at the time of the click. If the account was not using cross-account conversion tracking at the time of the click, Google Ads will look for the UploadConversion in the account used to upload conversions

But before we start moving all Conversion-Trackers to the master-account i have one critical question:

Does that mean, that all uploaded conversions using the master account will share the settings from the master account instead of using the conversion-settings from the origin-account?

For example: we have a conversion named "Signup" that is configured with different values and "ExcludeFromBidding" settings in the different accounts.

If we would create that same conversion also in the master account to be able to upload the conversion and then upload conversions from the sub-accounts using the master-account, would those conversions still use the settings from the origin account or the settings from the master account?

Regards, Christopher

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Christopher,

I am a colleague of Peter and let me provide support to your concern.

With regard to the INVALID_CONVERSION_TYPE error that you encountered, if you haven't enable cross-account conversion tracking then uploading your conversions (that belong to the client account) into the master (MCC/manager) account would result in an error since technically the conversions still belong to the client account and also the master account is not yet authorized to manage the client account's conversions.

Since your succeeding questions about inheriting conversion settings is already more of a product related concern, I have added the Google Ads Product Support team (ads-s...@google.com) in our thread as they should be the more appropriate team to provide guidance regarding the full scope of cross-account conversion tracking.

Should the issue or concern revert back to the AdWords API or Google Ads API, please let us know and we'll be happy to assist you.

Regards,

Ernie John Blanca Tacata Google Ads API Team

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[Martin Levi]

Hi Christopher,

I'm interested to know how you resolved this issue since I am considering adding more ad accounts to my master account and using the same conversion action across multiple accounts.

Like you I don't want to try to upload the click for each ad account that shares the same conversion action, and I also don't want to pass the account id out in my tracking template.

It seems to me that I can use the Google Ads API Click View query to retrieve the account id of the click - did you try this?  I'm also wondering how the move from ad account level conversion actions to using a shared master account conversion action impacted campaigns in the ad account, since there would be no history of conversions for the new shared conversion action.

Best regards,

Martin

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Martin,

Thank you for commenting on this forum post. Allow me to provide support here.

You may try to set up the cross-account conversion tracking for your use case and upload conversions moving forward using API by following the specific guides below:
https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/upload-clicks
https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/upload-calls

If you have further questions on how the cross-account conversion tracking works, then I would suggest to reach out to the product team via this link.

As for the part of the email below, please note that the click_view will get the clicks of the account ID you've specified in your API request.

It seems to me that I can use the Google Ads API Click View query to retrieve the account id of the click - did you try this?

Let me know if you have further questions.

[Christopher Parotat]

Hi Martin,

We are still guessing the conversion's account id based on some meta-data related to the conversion. We were able to tweak the algorithm and now almost all of our conversions are correctly guessed.

Only occasionally when we change our ad setup or add new accounts we have a short period where the system has to retry uploads to multiple accounts to learn the new setup.

But we are also still planning to switch to using the Click Performance Report/click_view eventually, but we were not able to evaluate if it would really work for our use case yet.

Best,

Christopher

[Martin Levi]

Hi Ernie,

Thanks for your response.  So there is a way to retrieve the account Id for a click, but if I understand correctly I would have to query all ad accounts attached to my manager account, and then call the Click View query for each one to determine which clicks were relevant for each account.

This seems very cumbersome to me.  I have decided to set up cross-account conversion tracking which will enable me to upload all clicks against the manager account Id.

Regards,

Martin

[Martin Levi]

Hi Christopher,

Thanks for your reply.  I think there is a way of determining the account Id of each click using the Click View query, as I replied to Ernie's message, but it looks to be very clumsy and awkward.

I have decided to implement cross-account conversion tracking, which will solve the issue and allow me to upload clicks against the manager account Id.  For me it has the added benefit that ad accounts can share conversion events, so that if a new account begins to run a campaign optimized on a conversion action that is already used by an existing ad account then the new account will benefit from the accumulated conversion history of the existing one.  This may not be relevant in your use case.

All the best,

Martin

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi everyone,

@Martin, glad to hear that you were able to resolve the concern by implementing cross account conversion tracking. Should you have questions on the behaviors of this feature, you may reach out separately to the Google Ads Product Support team via this link.

@Christopher, also happy to hear that you were able to identify the accounts on your end. If you have additional API implementation concerns, you may write back to us via this thread, or send the details to our googleadsa...@google.com alias.

Best regards,

Peter Laurence Napa Oliquino Google Ads API Team

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