Skip to content
whitead

Fix: Enhanced Conversions not enabled

finding google ads updated 2026.04.30 4 min read
// contents · 7 sections
  1. Why this matters
  2. How to verify the issue
  3. How to fix it
  4. How to confirm the fix worked
  5. Diagnostic checklist — run all five within 7 days of deploy
  6. Related rules + concepts
  7. Sources

Enhanced Conversions is off, or on with sub-90% match rate. Flip it correctly and recover 5-25% of attributed conversions Smart Bidding misses.

Why this matters

Without EC, the base tag transmits only browser-cookie-keyed events; signed-out users, ITP-truncated cookies, and post-banner abandonments vanish. The rule fires at MEDIUM severity because tracking still works — but Smart Bidding optimizes against an undercounted baseline. Search-heavy accounts recover +5-10%; YouTube-heavy approach the +25% ceiling. Stacked with Consent Mode v2 Advanced and server-side tagging, combined recovery hits 30-50% of otherwise-lost conversions (Conversios, 2025-09-12). For B2B, EC-for-Leads feeds the closed-won signal that predicts revenue.

How to verify the issue

  1. Tools → Conversions → Summary, open the primary action, scroll to Enhanced conversions. Toggle Off confirms the rule.
  2. If On, click Diagnostics. Match rate <90% on EC-for-Web (or <85% on EC-for-Leads) means misconfigured payload.
  3. Admin → Account settings → Customer data terms. Unaccepted terms trip the audit regardless of toggle state.
  4. In Chrome with Tag Assistant, walk a conversion path; the enhanced_conversions_data payload must contain hashed em, ph, or addr.

How to fix it

  1. Accept Customer Data Terms in Admin → Account settings. Otherwise every EC payload drops silently.
  2. Pick the variant. EC-for-Web for e-commerce and same-session lead-gen; EC-for-Leads for B2B closed-won from CRM. B2B needs both.
  3. Enable EC-for-Web. Tools → Conversions → Summary, open the primary action, expand Enhanced conversions, toggle on, choose Google tag. For GTM, install Conversion Linker and enable user-provided data with hashed em, ph, addr.
  4. Enable EC-for-Leads (B2B). Same toggle, select Customer data. Capture GCLID at form submit via a hidden field, store in CRM, upload closed-won via the UI, OCI API, or connector. Salesforce-native OCI is migrating to Google Ads Data Manager (Google Ads Help, 2025-10-08).

"Enhanced conversions uses a secure one-way hashing algorithm called SHA256 on your first-party customer data, such as email addresses, before sending to Google."
— Google Ads Help (2026-04-30)

How to confirm the fix worked

Diagnostic checklist — run all five within 7 days of deploy

  • Customer Data Terms = Accepted in Admin → Account settings.
  • Tag Assistant records enhanced_conversions_data with hashed em, ph, or addr on a live test.
  • Diagnostics shows Match rate ≥90% on EC-for-Web (or ≥85% on EC-for-Leads).
  • Status: Recording appears within 3 hours of the test.
  • No Hashing format invalid or Field unrecognized warning.

If all five pass, the finding closes. Sub-90% match rates usually mean dataLayer pushes raw email_address into a field the tag is not reading — fix the mapping, not the settings page.

In Whitead's onboarding audits this is the most-frequent measurement gap — EC-for-Web sits disabled on roughly half the accounts we touch, and EC-for-Leads is absent in ~70% of B2B accounts even where the CRM exposes closed-won trivially. It is also the highest-leverage low-effort fix: 30-90 minutes yields a permanent +5-25% recovery and unlocks downstream optimizations (Smart Bidding accuracy, audience signals, attribution fidelity) compounding over 4-8 weeks. The trap is the second failure mode — EC reads "Recording" while match rate sits at 30-40%. Treat the toggle being on as a checkpoint, not a finish line.

Sources

← Back to Wiki