Cost per Conversion and Conversion Rate calculations - API

[oli...@dashthis.com]

Hello everyone!

I am a member of the technical support of a reporting tool we provide to Google Ads advertisers.

Recently, a case of "data discrepancy" have been uncovered and we still struggle to understand the calculations of the Cost/Conversions and the Conversion Rate metrics.

For technical reasons I won't go into, we usually make the Cost/Conv calculation on our side. However, one of our clients showed us its Google Ads UI with results for these metrics, and they do not match the calculation:

Cost/Conv = Cost / Conversions

Conversion Rate = Conversions / Clicks

Here is a screenshot where you can see that:

As you can see, the calculation in the UI matches for some campaigns, but not all of them.

How can that be?

From some research on the Web, it is already noted that some clicks and/or conversions can be wrongly tracked on some platforms or specific cases (e.g., old mobile platforms, etc).

If anyone could explain that to me, that would be great :)

Even better, if you can provide me with a way to report the exact numbers from the UI (through the API), that would be even better!

[Dannison Yao (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Olivier,

It appears that you are using the Campaign Performance Report. You could download this by referring to our reporting guidelines or sample codes (also available in different languages) and compare the results to the UI. However, since the AdWords API only reflects the results shown in the Google Ads UI, you will not be able to see the differences. If you think that there are data discrepancies in your report, you could open your concern to the Advertiser's Community Forum, as the product experts are better equipped in answering your concerns.

Regards,

Dannison

AdWords API Team

[oli...@dashthis.com]

Hello Dannison,

Thanks for the reply.

As a matter of fact, we do download the Campaign Performance Report to obtain the results :)

Basically, for technical reasons on our side (among other things, aggregate results from multiple Adwords accounts), we prefer (for some metrics, not all) to calculate using parts of a calculated metric. For example, get the Cost and the Conversions separately, then re-calculating them. 

In that specific case, we do not obtain the same results as the Adwords UI. If the Conversion Rate displayed in the UI is different from the calculated metric using its parts, how can we find the correct numbers to do the calculation, in the API?

Let me know :)

[Dannison Yao (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Olivier,

The AdWords API only reflects the results in the UI. Since you mentioned that your computation does not reflect in the Google Ads UI, it would be better to open your concern to the Advertiser's Community Forum, as the product experts are better equipped in answering your concerns. 

Regards,

Dannison

AdWords API Team