Integrate Google Ads with Adapty Attribution

Adapty Attribution’s Google Ads integration works in both directions. Adapty pulls spend, impressions, and clicks from your Google Ads accounts, and sends installs, trials, and purchases back to Google, so Google can optimize your campaigns on real revenue.

Adapty connects to two kinds of Google Ads campaigns, and each kind has its own tab and setup:

• App campaigns: Google’s App campaigns for installs, formerly Universal App Campaigns (UAC), which promote your app in the App Store or Google Play. Adapty sends events to Google through the App Link ID of each app, and Google attributes the install to its campaign, ad group, ad, and keyword. These campaigns need no tracking link.
• Other campaigns: Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, Video, and Shopping campaigns, which send users through an ad click, to the store or to a web funnel. Adapty gives you a tracking template for the campaign and sends conversions to the Google Ads account you select, matched by Google’s click ID.

Step 1. Connect your Google account

1. In Adapty Attribution, go to Integrations from the left sidebar and select Google Ads.
2. Click Sign in with Google.

3. Select the Google account that has access to your Google Ads accounts and click Continue.
4. Select all the requested permissions and click Continue.

After that, Adapty syncs every Google Ads account your Google account can access, including the client accounts under a manager account. To add ad accounts that another Google account can access, click Sign in with Google again.

Step 2. Add App campaigns

To send in-app events to your Google App campaigns, create a configuration in Adapty Attribution, then link it to your app in Google Ads with an App Link ID for each platform.

In Adapty Attribution, create the configuration:

1. In Integrations > Google Ads, switch to the App Campaigns tab and click Create configuration. Adapty creates a configuration for your current app and opens it.

2. Copy the Provider ID value. You need it to create App Link IDs in Google Ads.

In Google Ads, create an App Link ID for each platform:

1. Click the Tools icon and select Data manager.
2. Click + Connect Product, select Third-party app analytics, and click Continue.
3. Click Create link ID.
4. From the provider list, select Other provider and paste the Provider ID you copied from Adapty Attribution.
5. Select iOS as the platform and find your app in the Look up your app field.
6. Click Create link ID and copy the generated link ID.
7. To create the Android link ID, repeat steps 3–6 with Android as the platform.

In Adapty Attribution, add the link IDs:

1. In the configuration, paste the link IDs into the iOS App Link ID and Android App Link ID fields. Each link ID can belong to one configuration only.

2. Map events and click Save.
3. To verify the connection, click Send test event, select an event, and send it. Google adds each event it receives to your app’s conversion actions in Google Ads, so you can select them as your campaign’s optimization goal.

Step 3. Add Other campaigns

To track Search, Display, Shopping, and other click-based campaigns, create a configuration for them in Adapty Attribution and add its tracking template to the campaign in Google Ads. You need one configuration for each Google Ads account that serves your ads.

1. In Integrations > Google Ads, switch to the Other Campaigns tab and click Create configuration.

   

2. In the Google Ads account dropdown, select the client account that serves the ads. Google accepts a conversion only in the account that served its ad. Manager accounts aren’t listed, because they can’t hold conversions.

   

3. Copy the Tracking template value. Then, in Google Ads, open the campaign settings and paste it in Campaign URL options > Tracking template. One template covers both iOS and Android.

4. If the ads lead to a web funnel, expand the Web funnel section:

   • Copy the Pixel snippet and install it on your funnel.
   • Copy the Ad URL parameters and, in the Google Ads campaign settings, paste them in Campaign URL options > Final URL suffix. Without them, Adapty attributes a purchase to Google Ads, but not to its campaign, ad group, or ad.
   

5. Map events and click Save.

When you save the configuration, Adapty creates a conversion action in the selected Google Ads account for each event you enabled. If Google refuses, Adapty shows an error and doesn’t save the configuration. Select a client account you can edit, or reconnect your Google account if its access has expired.

Step 4. Map events

To choose which events Google receives, in the Events mapping section, toggle on each event you want to send and select or type its name in Google Ads. Event names can’t contain commas.

The names work differently for the two campaign types:

• App campaigns: Install is always on and maps to first_open by default. For any event, you can select one of Google’s standard app events: first_open, session_start, in_app_purchase, ecommerce_purchase, view_item, view_item_list, add_to_cart, or view_search_results. Adapty sends any other name you type as a custom app event.
• Other campaigns: Each event’s default name is its Adapty event name, such as trial_started. The name you select or type becomes the name of the conversion action Adapty creates in Google Ads, exactly as typed.

Click Save.

Additional configuration

Revenue override

If you track trial events and want Google to attribute revenue to them, use the Revenue override section. It appears when the Trial started event is enabled. The override applies to Trial started only — Trial converted and Subscription started always carry their actual revenue.

For each trial event target, set the percentage of the subscription price to report as revenue. For example, at 30%, Adapty sends 30% of the subscription price as the conversion value for trial events.

To add an override:

1. Enable Trial started in the Events mapping section.
2. In Revenue override, click Add event.
3. Select the target event and enter a revenue percentage (0–100).
4. Click Save.

Qualified trial

A trial qualifies once it survives a given number of hours without being cancelled. Use the Qualified trial section to hold trial events until they qualify, so that Google receives only the trials users kept. The section is available for both App campaigns and Other campaigns.

For each trial event target, set the number of hours to wait. Adapty counts the hours from the trial start and sends the event when the deadline passes. If the user turns off auto-renewal before the deadline, Adapty never sends the event. If the user turns auto-renewal back on before the deadline, Adapty sends the event as planned.

To hold a trial event until it qualifies:

1. Enable Trial started in the Events mapping section.
2. In Qualified trial, click Add event.
3. Select the target event and enter the number of hours to wait, from 1 to 24.
4. Click Save.

Revenue override and Qualified trial work independently, and you can apply both to the same trial event. Revenue override changes the value Google receives; Qualified trial changes when Google receives it. With both, Adapty holds the event until the trial qualifies, then sends it with the overridden revenue.

Google Ads data in Adapty Attribution

Adapty refreshes Google Ads spend, impressions, and clicks every 4 hours. Each refresh also pulls the previous 3 days again, because Google keeps adjusting recent numbers.

In Adapty Attribution analytics, Google Ads data is available at four levels: campaign, ad group, ad, and keyword. Keyword-level spend exists only for Search campaigns, and Performance Max campaigns report at the campaign level only. The country breakdown depends on the level:

• Campaign and ad group: Exact, as Google reports it.
• Ad: Estimated. Google doesn’t report ads by country, so Adapty splits each ad’s numbers across countries the same way its ad group’s numbers split.
• Keyword: Not available.

An install that carries a Google Ads click ID that doesn’t match any campaign in your connected Google Ads accounts appears under the Google Play channel. For how Adapty picks between Google Ads and other sources that claim the same install, see Channels.