Paid Media7 min readBy the Kiwi senior team

Google Ads conversion tracking and Consent Mode v2: measure without lying

A conversion is an event you defined, fired after a real action, under a consent state the tag is allowed to use. Consent Mode v2 and the EU user consent policy sit on top of Google Ads conversion tracking.

In this guide
  1. The tag does not know what a lead is
  2. Modeled conversions are not a case study
  3. A clean event list for a service business
  4. Ads pixels on a site that defaults ads storage to denied
  5. What to fix in the codebase, not in the ads UI
  6. Questions
  7. Sources

The tag does not know what a lead is

Google Ads conversion tracking records events you configure: a purchase, a submit, a call. Google’s conversion-tracking article is implementation, not judgment. If you fire ‘submit’ on page load, the optimizer will buy page loads.

Consent Mode is the contract for whether analytics and ads storage may be used. Default denied until a documented choice is the honest B2B setup. The EU user consent policy still requires a lawful basis for personalized ads in the EEA/UK. These are parallel rules, not alternatives.

Modeled conversions are not a case study

When storage is denied, Google may model some conversions. That is a statistical estimate in Google’s system. It is not a screenshot you put on a website as a pipeline result. Do not launder modeled numbers into public proof.

A clean event list for a service business

Keep it short enough that a salesperson would recognize each name.

  • form_start — the person reached the request form
  • form_submit — the provider confirmed a real submission
  • qualified_request — a human marked fit, if you can send that later
  • Do not send scroll depth as a primary conversion
  • Do not send the same event from three tags

Ads pixels on a site that defaults ads storage to denied

If the marketing origin does not run advertising cookies — Kiwi’s public site does not — then this guide is how a client’s own property should behave, not a description of kiwiagencies.com. Do not paste a Google Ads tag onto a site whose privacy notice says ads are off.

What to fix in the codebase, not in the ads UI

Consent signal, one loader, event names, and a thank-you state that only fires after success. Related work at Kiwi: technical SEO and performance foundation, plus the request form on a dedicated route.

Frequently asked questions

Can we run Google Ads without a conversion tag?

You can pay for clicks. You cannot tell the system what ‘good’ was. Manual CPC Search with human search-term review is still a valid small test.

Does Consent Mode replace a cookie banner?

No. Consent Mode is how Google’s tags hear the choice. The banner and the notice are how the human makes it. They must match.

Should the conversion fire in an iframe?

Fire it when your origin knows the action succeeded. If Typeform posts a complete message, listen for that. Do not fire on embed load.

Is enhanced conversions required?

It is optional hashed first-party data, with its own consent and policy requirements. Skip it until the basic event is trustworthy.

Sources

Figures cited above are drawn from the linked publications and are the responsibility of their sources; we date and scope them rather than presenting them as universal guarantees.

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