How To Evaluate Consideration Lag in Google Ads

For all advertisers, but especially those who promote products or services with long consideration periods, it’s crucial to understand your buyer’s journey. 

A customer’s path to conversion (whether it’s a lead or a purchase) can inform your creative approach and provide helpful context as you analyze campaign results. 

Since Google Ads tracks conversions based on date of click, not date of conversion, we always look at path metrics to evaluate user behavior. See below for step-by-step instructions on how to pull two different reports in Google Ads.

Google Ads Path Metrics

In Google Ads, follow these steps:

1. Click on “Tools and settings”
2. Click on “Attribution” under the Measurement category
3. Click on “Path Metrics” from the left menu
4. From the dropdown, select the Conversion Action that you want to evaluate and the lookback window
5. Select “Measure from first interaction” 

What you will see is a report (below) listing conversions broken down by when they occurred after the user’s first interaction. Above the data table, it will show the Avg. days to conversion and Avg. interactions to conversion.

Google Ads Reports Editor

You can find similar data in Google Ads by following these steps.

1. Click on “Reports” from the top menu in Google Ads
2. Click on the + button where it says “Custom” and create a new table
3. In the top right search box in the Reports menu, type “Conversion Action” and add it as a new row
4. In the top right search box in the Reports menu, type “Days to Conversion” and add it as a new row
5. In the top right search box in the Reports menu, type “Conversions” and add it as a new column
6. Click on the Conversion Action item and select “Filter,” and then choose the specific conversion action that you want to view.
7. In the Reports menu, select the date range that you’re curious about.

What you will see is a report showing the specific conversions segmented by days to conversion.

For clients who sell luxury items—or optimize for a lead event that is low in the funnel—it’s not uncommon to see more than 30% of conversions happen 3+ days after the first interaction. 

Click here to read another article on how to measure campaigns for advertisers with freemium models who see long consideration lags.

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