Enhanced Conversions is a Google Ads feature that sends hashed user data (email, phone, address) to Google for cookie-independent conversion matching. Typically recovers 5-15% in conversions.
detail
Classic conversion counting runs on the Google Ads gclid cookie. Cookie loss (Safari ITP, ad-blockers, iOS ATT) breaks the match; even when the user converts, Google can't record it.
Enhanced Conversions opens a parallel path:
- When the user completes an order, plain email + phone are pushed to the dataLayer.
- GTM (or sGTM) applies a SHA-256 hash to that data.
- The hashed data is sent to Google Ads.
- Google matches it against signed-in Google accounts on its own systems, so matching works without a cookie.
Two ways to implement it:
- Tag-side (web): tick 'Include user-provided data' on the Google Ads Conversion tag in GTM.
- API-based: offline conversion upload via sGTM or the Google Ads API directly.
Rules that matter: lowercase and trim the email, format phone as E.164, normalize before hashing.
Example: an e-commerce account with 5,000 monthly orders reported 4,250 conversions before Enhanced Conversions. Afterward it rose to 4,825, a 13.5% recovery. Feeding Smart Bidding cleaner signal dropped CPA by 18% within 30 days.