Google Ads offline conversions by gclid for interviews and hires

What it does

Smart bidding in Google Ads optimizes for the conversions you declare. When the only conversion is a form submit or a tap on a call or messenger button, Google learns to buy those taps as cheaply as possible, whether or not the people behind them are any good. Offline conversion import closes the loop. When a lead reaches a stage that matters to the business, you tell Google which ad click produced it. Over time bidding shifts toward the searches, audiences and placements that bring qualified people, not just responsive ones.

The mechanics are simple. With auto-tagging on, Google adds a gclid to the landing page address, and your site stores it with the lead. Later you upload the gclid, the conversion action, the conversion time with its time zone and an optional value, and Google matches the upload to the original click. A few rules apply: the conversion time must be after the click, the click must fall within the conversion action's click-through window (90 days at most), and imported conversions can take several hours to appear in reports. Check Google's help for the current limits before you rely on them.

Primary and secondary actions decide what bidding sees. Primary actions, when included in a campaign's goals, are used for bidding and appear in the “Conversions” column. Secondary actions appear only in “All conversions” and are there for observation. Google's lead categories describe the funnel: Qualified lead for someone who passed your screening and Converted lead for a closed deal or a hire. A common setup makes the interview primary, because it is close to real value and still frequent enough to learn from, and keeps the hire secondary, because hires are rare and slow.

Decide what to do with the original contact conversion. While interviews are few, many advertisers keep the button or form conversion primary as well, so smart bidding has enough signal. Once interviews arrive steadily, moving the raw contact conversion to secondary focuses bidding on qualified leads. Treat it as a deliberate change: switching primary actions changes what campaigns optimize for and can put the bid strategy back into learning. Do it once, note the date and compare cost per interview before and after instead of reacting day by day.

AdAce Ads automates the upload. When a lead captured by the tracking script is marked “interview” or “hired”, in Telegram or in the service, it is uploaded to Google Ads as an offline click conversion by its gclid. The service creates two conversion actions in the account: “AdAce · Interview”, primary, category Qualified lead, and “AdAce · Hire”, secondary, category Converted lead. If Google answers that the conversion action is too new to accept uploads, the service retries later. The workspace emergency switch pauses sending at any time.

Why it helps

• Bidding learns from interviews instead of button taps.
• Primary and secondary actions come with the right lead categories.
• No spreadsheets or manual uploads: a status tap triggers the upload.
• Rejections for a just-created conversion action are retried automatically.

How to set it up

1. Turn on auto-tagging in the client's Google Ads account and keep it on.
2. Install the lead tracking script from “Analytics” → “Leads” on the client's site.
3. Mark leads “interview” or “hired” in the Telegram topic or in the service as soon as it happens.
4. In Google Ads, open Goals, then Conversions, and check that “AdAce · Interview” and “AdAce · Hire” are there as primary and secondary.
5. Check which goals each campaign bids on and whether the Qualified lead category is included.
6. Compare cost per interview by campaign in AdAce Ads before changing bids or budgets.

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