Custom goal

By default every campaign bids toward the account-default goals, built from the primary conversion actions of the account. That keeps the account learning as one. Some campaigns need a different target: a hiring campaign that should count job applications, or a lead campaign meant to bid only on qualified leads imported from a CRM.

A custom goal handles those cases. You pick the exact conversion actions, primary or secondary, and set the goal on one campaign. That campaign then bids on those actions, and its Conversions column counts them, whatever their status at account level.

The price is comparability. Two campaigns side by side may now count different things in the same column. Google itself recommends account-default goals for most campaigns, so they learn from each other.

1. Open the Goals menu, then Summary, and expand Custom goals at the bottom of the page.
2. Select Add custom goal, name it, tick the conversion actions it should count, and save.
3. Open the campaign's settings, go to Conversion goals, switch from the account-default goals to campaign-specific goals, and pick the custom goal.
4. To change several campaigns at once, select them in the campaigns table, choose Edit, then Update conversion goals.

An online furniture shop also hires delivery drivers and runs a small Search campaign for job applications. On account-default goals, that campaign bid toward purchases it would never get. The shop creates a custom goal holding only its Job application action, kept secondary so it never steers the other campaigns, and sets it on the hiring campaign.

The next month the hiring campaign reports 46 conversions at €14 each. In the campaigns table, the account's Conversions total now mixes those 46 applications with 310 sales. Anyone reading that total overstates sales by about 15%, unless they take the hiring campaign out first.

• Using custom goals to patch primary actions that are wrong for the whole account: fix the account-default goals instead.
• Creating a conversion action and forgetting the custom goal: it holds only the actions you picked.
• Comparing cost per conversion across campaigns that count different things.
• Switching a campaign's goal before a busy week: Smart Bidding needs time to adapt to what it now aims at.

The audit checks Oppy runs on this, each with its own page.

• Different results added into one number
• The same result counted by more than one action
• A goal Google is aiming at that has never been hit

• Primary conversion action: A conversion action used for bidding and shown in the Conversions column.
• Conversion action: One definition of a conversion in Google Ads, with its source, its counting, its value and its window.
• Smart Bidding: Google's automated bid strategies that set a bid for each auction toward conversions or conversion value.
• KPI (key performance indicator): The number an account is judged on, such as cost per lead or ROAS.