UPDATE: The start of this change will now begin mid-July instead of June as mentioned in the original blog post.
What’s changing?Google Ads attribution models are used to assign conversion credit to each touchpoint in a conversion path. We currently offer several rules-based attribution models which assign value based on predefined rules. These models don’t provide the flexibility needed to adapt to evolving consumer journeys. Due to a declining usage of these rules-based models and adoption of data-driven attribution, we are simplifying attribution model options. Starting in mid-July 2023, developers will no longer be able to choose the following attribution models for new conversion actions or existing conversion actions that do not use these models:
- First click (
GOOGLE_SEARCH_ATTRIBUTION_FIRST_CLICK) - Linear (
GOOGLE_SEARCH_ATTRIBUTION_LINEAR) - Time decay (
GOOGLE_SEARCH_ATTRIBUTION_TIME_DECAY) - Position-based (
GOOGLE_SEARCH_ATTRIBUTION_POSITION_BASED)
GOOGLE_SEARCH_ATTRIBUTION_DATA_DRIVEN), last click attribution (GOOGLE_ADS_LAST_CLICK) or external attribution.What do I need to do?
If you are creating new or updating existing conversion actions using
ConversionActionService and you are setting the AttributionModelSettings to one of the deprecated attribution models, you will need to modify your code to use either: data-driven attribution (GOOGLE_SEARCH_ATTRIBUTION_DATA_DRIVEN) or last click attribution (GOOGLE_ADS_LAST_CLICK).Starting in mid-July 2023, you will begin receiving an error if you attempt to set a deprecated attribution model. Conversion actions that still have these attribution models after this time will be automatically migrated later in the year.
Starting in September 2023, we'll switch any conversion actions still using these models to data-driven attribution. If you don’t want your conversion actions to use data-driven attribution, update your conversion actions to the last click attribution model before September 2023.
You will be able to query the attribution model associated with a conversion action using
GoogleAdsService.Search or GoogleAdsService.SearchStream until these rules-based attribution models are no longer available in Google Ads:
SELECT conversion_action.attribution_model_settings.attribution_model FROM conversion_actionIf you have any questions, please reach out to us on the forum.
Ian Ballantyne, Google Ads API Team