Advertising Editor Advertising Intelligence

How do I create a conversion goal?

Learn how to create a conversion goals that allows you to track how many times a certain action, called conversion, happens after someone clicks on your ad.

You create a conversion goal to track actions people take on your website after they click on your ad. When the action matches your conversion goal, it is counted as a conversion.

Important

For conversion goals to work, Microsoft Advertising needs to be able to collect data from your website. This requires Universal Event Tracking (UET).

Create a conversion goal

  1. From the top menu, select Tools > Conversion goals.

    If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, hover over Conversions and select Conversion goals.

  2. Select Create.
  3. Choose the type of conversion you want to track: Website, Mobile app install, or Offline.
  4. Select Next.
  5. Choose a goal category from the dropdown menu and then choose a goal type.
  6. Enter a name for your goal in the Goal name box. When naming your goal, use a descriptive name that makes sense to you. (For example, "Checkout page".) Please note that after you choose a name for your conversion goal, the same name may not be used again in the future.
  7. Fill in the appropriate values for your selected goal type.
  8. If you want to add a monetary value for each conversion, select one of the following from the Revenue, dropdown menu:
    • Each conversion action has the same value, and then enter the amount and select the currency (if available). This is a static revenue value that doesn't change.
    • Conversion action value may vary (for instance, by purchase price), and then enter the default amount and select the default currency (if available) to be used when no value is received for a conversion. The revenue value will change based on the customization you make to the UET tag tracking code that you add to your website. To learn more, see How to report variable revenue with UET. This option is only available for destination URL and event conversion goals.
  9. Fine-tune your conversion goal with Advanced settings:
    • Set the Scope of this goal to all accounts or a specific account.
    • Change how you Count your conversions. Learn more.
    • Enter a Conversion window to track up to 90 days in the past.
    • Set a View-through conversion window to track conversions that occur in this period of time after a customer views (but doesn't click) your ad. Learn more about view-through conversions.
    • Check or clear the Include in "Conversions" checkbox depending on whether or not you want to track all conversions. Learn more about "Conversions" versus "All conversions".
  10. Select Next.
  11. Select the UET tag that you want to associate with this conversion goal (not applicable to offline conversions).
  12. Choose an answer for Do you have this UET tag installed on your website?

    Note

    If you choose either No, this UET tag is not installed on all your website pages or I’m not sure. I need instructions to install the tag, select Install the tag yourself or Send the tag to a developer. Select Next and follow the onscreen instructions. Select Next to finish setting up the conversion goal. Learn more about adding a UET tag to your website.

  13. Select Save and next.
  14. For Custom Event goals, specify when you want to track this event (choose Track event on inline action or Track event on page load). Follow the provided instructions to set up the event tag on your website.
  15. (Optional) In the resulting Conversion goal created! message, select test the goal now to use the UET Tag Helper browser extension to verify that your goal is working correctly. Learn more about UET Tag Helper.
Notes
  • When you create a conversion goal, Microsoft Advertising automatically enables auto-tagging of Microsoft Click ID, as this is required for UET conversion goals and improves the accuracy of conversion tracking. When a customer clicks your ad, Microsoft Advertising automatically appends a unique click ID to the landing page URL. (For example, your final URL becomes www.contoso.com/?msclkid=123abc.) UET uses the cookie on your website’s domain to capture the click ID that brought the customer to your website, thereby allowing you to track the conversion. Each ad click is tied to a unique click ID. To disable auto-tagging of Microsoft Click ID, go to Shared Library > Account level options and uncheck Add Microsoft Click ID (MSCLKID) to URLs to allow conversion tracking. Doing so will make it impossible to import offline conversions and hinder accurate conversion tracking data.
  • To see the complete list of currencies available for conversion goals, see Conversion Goal Revenue Currencies.
  • Microsoft Advertising matches UET logs with strings defined in destination URL and custom event goals in a case insensitive way. For example, you can create a Destination URL goal type to track visits to your Thankyou.html page as conversions using the condition URL contains tHANKYOU.HTML
  • You can also create a conversional goal by applying our Create conversion goal recommendation in the Recommendations tab. Based on data from your UET tag, Microsoft Advertising will recommend relevant conversion goals to track valuable customer actions on your website. In the default setting, the recommended goal is included in "Conversions" and will affect any enabled automated bidding strategies.

Next steps

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