Purchase revenue in Google Analytics 4

Source: Analytics Help, Analytics dimensions and metrics.

The figure is only as good as your purchase event. GA4 takes the value your site sends with it. Some shops send the basket with tax and shipping, others without. Refunds lower it only if your site or your back office sends the refund event.

Versus Google Ads conversion value

Google Ads conversion value counts only purchases it credits to an ad, under its attribution model and conversion window. By default it books them on the day of the click. GA4 purchase revenue counts every order on the day it was placed, from every source.

So purchase revenue is almost always the larger figure, and the two never match day by day. That is expected. They answer two questions: what did the shop sell, and what did Google Ads help sell.

Worked example

A ceramics shop spends €9,000 on Google Ads in October. GA4 reports €84,200 of purchase revenue. Google Ads reports €31,500 of conversion value, a ROAS of 3.5. Revenue from ads, the GA4 revenue of visits from google / cpc, is €27,900.

Each figure is right for its question. The shop's blended return is €84,200 for €9,000 of ads, 9.4 times. The ads' own return is the 3.5 Google Ads claims, or 3.1 by GA4's session count. Comparing those last two is how the team checks Google's attribution against the site's records.

1. In Google Analytics, open Reports, then Monetization, then Overview: Purchase revenue is one of the top cards.
2. Reports, then Monetization, then Ecommerce purchases, splits revenue by product as Item revenue.
3. Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, can show revenue per source once you add it through Customize report.

Purchase revenue is in the Revenue and ecommerce group of Add a metric. Total revenue, Ecommerce purchases and Average purchase revenue sit beside it. Optizads reads GA4's own total for the days asked.

To see the blended return of the example above, make a Calculated metric: Purchase revenue divided by Spend. Optizads divides the period's revenue by the period's spend, not an average of daily ratios. Put it next to ROAS and Revenue from ads, and the three readings sit on one row.

Revenue from ads is not purchase revenue. It is GA4's total revenue on visits whose source is google / cpc, so it includes subscriptions and any ad revenue those visits produced.

• Expecting GA4 purchase revenue to equal Google Ads conversion value.
• Sending purchases without a transaction ID. A reloaded thank-you page can then count one order twice.
• Forgetting refunds. Without the refund event, purchase revenue only goes up.
• Comparing a property that sends tax and shipping in the value with one that does not.

• Conversion value: What a conversion is worth, sent with it or set as a default.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): Conversion value divided by cost, often shown as a percentage: €400 of sales from €100 of ads is a 400% ROAS.
• Attribution model: The rule that decides how credit for a conversion is shared between the clicks and ads that led to it.
• Conversion window: How long after a click a conversion can still be counted for it, from 1 to 90 days.

• Cart-to-view rate (GA4): Cart-to-view rate in Google Analytics 4 is the number of users who added a product to their cart, divided by the number of users who viewed that product.
• Sessions from Google Ads (GA4): Sessions from Google Ads are the GA4 sessions whose source and medium are google / cpc, which is how auto-tagged Google Ads clicks arrive.
• Value per conversion: Value per conversion is the average value of one conversion in Google Ads: conversion value divided by conversions.
• Conversions (by conv. time): Conversions (by conv. time) counts each conversion on the day it happened, not on the day of the ad click that led to it.