Google Store Sales
Overview
Section titled “Overview”Store Sales Measurement in Google Ads helps you understand the full impact of your online advertising by attributing offline, in-store purchases to your digital campaigns. It gives you a more accurate view of return on ad spend across Search, Shopping, Display, Video and Performance Max campaigns, while connecting offline transactions to online customer interactions. The resulting insights can be analyzed by device, campaign, ad group or keyword to help optimize your advertising strategy.
Link a Merchant Center account and transactions can be credited at product level rather than as a single sale. Where you only need to record that a conversion happened, Google Offline Conversions is the lighter option.
Supported sources
Section titled “Supported sources”Sources supported by Google Store Sales
| Category | Supported |
|---|---|
| API | |
| CRM | |
| Database | |
| File & storage | |
| Warehouse |
Prerequisites
Section titled “Prerequisites”Before connecting Google Store Sales Conversions, make sure you have:
- A Google Ads account, and access to the manager account above it.
- A conversion action already created in Google Ads for your in-store sales, and its exact name to hand.
- A Merchant Center account ID, if you are linking product data.
- A Datahash Studio account with the target project selected.
- A source connected in the same project holding the transaction data.
Authentication
Section titled “Authentication”In Studio, open Destinations, find Google, and click the Store Sales Conversions tile. This connector uses single sign-on.
- Click Sign in with Google.
- Sign in with the credentials that have access to your Google Ads account and approve the requested permissions.
Configuration
Section titled “Configuration”- Select the Customer ID of the Google Ads account from the dropdown.
- Select the Login Customer ID, which is the manager account above it.
- Name the Instance, then click Next.
- Select the Conversion Action Name from the dropdown, for example In-store Purchase.
- Enter the Merchant Center Account ID if you are linking product data.
- Click Finish.
Google identifies the account you are writing to with two IDs. The Customer ID is your Google Ads account, and the Login Customer ID is the manager account, sometimes called the MCC, that sits above it.
Only conversion actions that already exist in Google Ads appear in the list. If the one you need is missing, create it in Google Ads first and then reopen this step.
Manage instance
Section titled “Manage instance”One instance covers one Google Ads account and one conversion action. Reporting against a second conversion action needs a second instance.
To add another, open Manage Instances and click Add Instance. To change one, open it from Manage Instances, use the menu in the top right and choose Edit, update the fields and click Finish. Cancel keeps the previous configuration running, so updates apply only after you finish.
Data & identifiers
Section titled “Data & identifiers”Signals collects and hashes the transaction and customer data from your source, then uploads it to Google Ads for Store Sales matching.
Required
Section titled “Required”| Field | When it is required |
|---|---|
| Event time | Always. UNIX timestamp. |
| Event name | Always. |
| Currency | Always. Three-letter ISO currency code. Store Sales reports revenue, so currency is not optional here. |
| Value | Always. A number. |
Recommended
Section titled “Recommended”Store Sales matches transactions to people, so the identifiers below decide how much of your in-store revenue can be attributed. Email, phone and the name fields are hashed; the rest are not.
| Field | Format |
|---|---|
| Email address | Trim leading and trailing whitespace and convert to lowercase. |
| Phone number | Up to fifteen digits, no leading zero, with whitespace, brackets, plus signs and hyphens removed. |
| First name | Letters only, lowercase, trimmed, no punctuation or special characters, UTF-8. |
| Last name | Letters only, lowercase, trimmed, no punctuation or special characters, UTF-8. |
| State or region | The two-character ANSI abbreviation code. |
| Postcode | Lowercase, no whitespace. |
| Language code | The two-letter code for the language of the feed your items were uploaded with. Needed only if you are uploading item attributes. |
| External ID | An identifier of your own for the upload job, such as a loyalty membership number. |
| Transaction ID | A stable reference for the transaction. |
| Quantity | How many items the transaction covered. |
| Custom key and value | One of each is accepted, and they segment store sales conversions. They work only after the custom key and values exist in the Google Ads account. |
Optional
Section titled “Optional”| Field | Format |
|---|---|
| Product name, category and IDs | Product detail for the transaction. Needed for product-level attribution. |
| Country | Two-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code. |
| Gender | m for male, f for female. |
| Third party user ID | An identifier assigned by another system. |
Consent parameters
Section titled “Consent parameters”Google requires consent to use customer data for advertising and personalisation, and consent status is carried per record as its EU user consent policy requires. Two parameters carry it:
- ad_user_data: consent for sending user data to Google for advertising purposes.
- ad_personalization: consent for ad personalisation.
All identifiers are hashed to SHA-256 before upload, and records without the required flags are excluded before the batch reaches Google Ads. That matters more here than on most connectors, because a till rarely captures consent as reliably as a web form does.
Best practices
Section titled “Best practices”- Create the conversion action in Google Ads before you start, since only existing actions appear in the dropdown.
- Improve contact capture at the till if match rates disappoint. Matching runs on hashed email, phone, name, state and postcode rather than a loyalty ID alone, so the ceiling is set by what checkout collects.
- Send a transaction ID so the same sale is not reported twice if a file is re-read.
- Upload nightly where POS operations allow it. Weekly works, but fresher data reaches Smart Bidding sooner and keeps revenue closer to the campaigns that drove the visit.
- Link the Merchant Center account if you want product-level attribution rather than a bare sale.
- Verify in Google Ads under Tools and Settings, then Conversions, then Store Sales Conversions.
Troubleshooting & FAQ
Section titled “Troubleshooting & FAQ”The conversion action I need is not in the dropdown. It has not been created in Google Ads yet. Create it there, then reopen this step.
The account I need is not in the dropdown. The Google account you signed in with does not have access to it. Sign in again with one that does.
What match rate should we expect? It depends on how much contact data the POS captures at checkout. With email or phone on a majority of transactions, a useful rate is achievable; with neither, there is nothing to match on.
Product-level detail is missing. The Merchant Center account ID was not supplied, or the product IDs do not match the catalog.
Duplicate sales. The transaction ID is missing or changes between exports.
Some transactions are never uploaded. They are probably missing the consent flags. Records without them are excluded before the batch is sent.