Google Ads / AdWords Conversion Tags in Mobile App (via Tealium WebView) fire, but don't arrive

[loldenburg]

Hi

we have set up a couple of very simple conversion tags for Google Ads (for testing, we even chose one to fire on All Pages). One is based on the gtag.js version, the other one on the old Conversion Tag template. 

The tags should fire in an app via a Tealium Web View (tealium.js) implementation.

We can see the tags firing (below an example request (to https://www.google.com/pagead/1p-conversion/942593865/? ). They look correct. But nothing gets to the Google Ads interface.

Could the reason be that Google does not accept Conversion Tags firing from domains other than the customer's normal domains? Here, they all fire from tags.tiqcdn.com (Tealium's domain), so I wonder if that could be the reason?

Is anyone else successfully getting their Google Ads Tags to run?

random	1775987178
cv	9
fst	*
num	1
label	B4eBCKD56pMBEMmuu8ED
bg	ffffff
guid	ON
resp	GooglemKTybQhCsO
u_h	667
u_w	375
u_ah	647
u_aw	375
u_cd	32
u_his	1
u_tz	60
u_java	false
u_nplug	0
u_nmime	0
data	event=conversion
gtm	2od1d1
frm	0
url	https://tags.tiqcdn.com/utag/PRIVACY-CLIENTACCOUNT/PRIVACY-CLIENTNAME/prod/mobile.html?
tiba	Tealium Mobile Webview
async	1
fmt	3
ctc_id	CAIVAgAAAB0CAAAA
ct_cookie_present	false
crd	CILQGwjJ0xs
gtd
cdct	2
is_vtc	1
ocp_id	mydPXLzvOMbu-gbw6r3YAQ
random	972985234
resp	GooglemKTybQhCsO
ipr	y

[BretCamble]

Any update on this? Did you get it working? Thanks.

[loldenburg]

No, we had to stop this after several tries.
The problem is that it does not seem possible (at least not without considerable extra engineering) to get the AdWords Cookie that is generated when clicking a link into Tealium's mobile app web view or the UDH-based library. So you can fire those Tags and they do send data to AdWords, but they will never show up as Conversions because AdWords cannot connect them with their "ad clicked" cookie.

If you have Adobe Analytics, they have a sensible In-App Conversion Tracking possibility (see the good description by Tealium here: https://community.tealiumiq.com/t5/Installation-Libraries/Mobile-App-Download-Tracking-with-Adobe-An... ), but with Google Analytics, you are really stuck with 2 options:

1) put the native Firebase framework into your app and use Firebase's built-in attribution stuff (does not cover all ad networks, eg no facebook) and their "Dynamic Links". You will have to live with Firebase's super-limited interface and even more limited e-commerce tracking framework, having to get any useful report data via BigQuery (quite a workaround, nothing for business people (they hate Firebase because they cannot do anything themselves and we have to now make Data Studio Reports for simple questions like "how many products X did campaign Y sell?"))

2) use a 3rd-party app attribution provider (adjust, appsflyer etc.). Here, instead of setting up an AdWords Conversion Tag in Tealium, you'd do the following:
1. Set up a 3rd party App Attribution provider that provides you with link URLs for your Ads.
2. Have your Ads link to those URLs (they then forward users into your app)
3. Inside the app, deploy the native 3rd-party Attribution provider's library. That library then does some "visitor stitching" and also informs AdWords etc. about your conversions via "postbacks".

hope that helps, @BretCamble .

[Marlene]

1. Set up a 3rd party App Attribution provider that provides you with link URLs for your Ads.

@loldenburg  Could you please provide more information about this option here? I'm on this point here and need to figure out how to solve this...

[loldenburg]

@Marlene - Sorry I missed this. We ended up not using that option, but imho it is the only one that would work.