Hey PPC friend,
What do you think: secondary conversion actions, are they used for bidding?
Yes, or no?
Simple question, but no obvious answer here, I am afraid. (Ask your colleagues during lunch.)
Google says:
“Each goal needs at least one primary conversion action to be used for campaign optimization. Primary conversion actions represent the most important actions customers or potential customers can take on your website, because Google Ads will optimize your campaign to achieve these primary actions.”
Source: https://support.google.com/sa360/answer/9455412?hl=en
BUT also…
“Secondary actions: These conversion actions are for observation only. They are used for reporting in the “All conversions” column in your reports, but not for bidding, even if the goal they are included in is used for bidding. The one exception is if the secondary action is part of a custom goal, in which case it’s used for bidding.”
Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/11461796?hl=en
So, the answer to my initial question is: it depends 😉
– Nils
PS: I like to use secondary conversion actions to test value-based bidding for different types of values that are reported back to Google, for the same conversion (think: profit VS revenue, non-capped revenue values VS capped revenue values, predicted LTV VS initial purchase value, browser-based tracking VS OCI, etc.). I create custom goals for them so that I can use them as campaign-specific conversion goals in my campaign experiments.