topic Re: How to find out what contact converted on Google Ads in Ads

How to find out what contact converted on Google Ads

psusanah — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 17:04:12 GMT

Hi all,

I've been desperately trying for months to understand how to discover what contact / email address converted on Google Ads, and I still haven't been able to find an answer, even after speaking to the HubSpot support chat.

What I want is simple: if I see a conversion on Google Ads (a form submission on the website) I want to be able to find out who submitted the form. It's the only reason I signed up to HubSpot, as my understanding was that HubSpot has the tools to access this information.

I've connected my HubSpot account with the Google Ads account - I can see all the campaigns, ad groups and keywords. I can see the clicks, impressions and conversion rate. The "contacts" column remains at 0, even though I have conversions (form submissions) on Google Ads.

What do I have to do to be able to see who converted?

FYI: I'm not an admin in the Google Ads account. I found an article on HubSpot that says you need to be to connect Google Ads with HubSpot, but I managed to connect them without being an admin. Not sure if this is somehow causing an issue, but just putting it out there just in case.

Thanks so much for any help at all. Haven't been able to find anything online either.

Best,

Paula

Re: How to find out what contact converted on Google Ads

MrJustinGivens — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 17:43:31 GMT

@psusanah It sounds like the HubSpot tracking template isn't configured because you weren't admin access in Google. Like you are experiencing, you don't see the full integration with Google Ads.

You can use the First Page Seen property and look for utm_ tags within the URL. For example, if it contains utm_source=cpc

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.

Justin Givens

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Re: How to find out what contact converted on Google Ads

psusanah — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 13:00:10 GMT

Hi Justin,

Thanks for your reply. I'm now admin of the Google Ads account in question, but I still don't see the information I want on HubSpot. Contacts are still 0. Any ideas on how I could fix it?

Re First Page Seen, do you have a tutorial on how to do this? I found a video on YouTube but now sure it is what you meant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb8tdBK4SUU

Many thanks,

Paula

Re: How to find out what contact converted on Google Ads

Sweely — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 17:52:51 GMT

The short answer is:

The reason your Contacts column in HubSpot's Google Ads reporting remains at 0 is that the native integration requires a user to both click a Google Ad and then convert on a HubSpot form to associate the contact record with the ad campaign data.

The key piece of data needed for this attribution, the Google Click ID (gclid), is likely not being captured and stored on the contact record because the HubSpot tracking template, which relies on being an admin to set up correctly, was missing or incorrectly configured.

Fixing the admin status might not retroactively apply the necessary tracking parameters, and the most reliable solution for linking specific contacts to their ad click data involves a server-side approach to manually capture and push the required parameters.

The long answer is:

It's completely understandable that you're frustrated, especially since linking the form submission to the original Google Ad click is the core value proposition you sought from HubSpot.

The issue lies in the crucial step of attributing the web session to the contact record at the point of conversion.

For the HubSpot-Google Ads integration to work as intended, when a user clicks on an ad, HubSpot needs to append a specific tracking template to the ad's destination URL.

This template is designed to capture all the essential attribution parameters, including the Google Click ID (gclid) from Google Ads auto-tagging.

The gclid is the unique identifier for the ad click.

When the user eventually submits a HubSpot form, the HubSpot tracking code is supposed to save this gclid along with other parameters like utm_source and utm_medium directly onto the contact record's properties, like First Page Seen or Original Source.

If the tracking template was not correctly applied or wasn't firing properly when the user clicked the ad - which can easily happen if the integration was incomplete due to lack of admin permissions initially - that vital gclid is missing from the contact's timeline.

Without the gclid on the contact record, HubSpot cannot complete the loop and associate the conversion with a specific ad or campaign, leaving your Contacts column at 0.

Since even becoming an admin hasn't fixed this, the most robust, long-term solution is to build a custom, server-side attribution pipeline using the HubSpot API, the Google Ads API, and a server-side tagging environment like Stape or Google Cloud Platform combined with Google Tag Manager (GTM).

You would use GTM on your website to ensure the gclid is captured as a first-party cookie when the ad is clicked.

When the form is submitted, instead of relying solely on HubSpot's internal mechanism, you would use a server-side setup to extract the contact's email or identifier and the storedgclid.

You can then use the HubSpot API to directly update the contact record with the gclid and relevant UTMs.

For advanced matching, you could even use the Google Ads API to look up the specific campaign, ad group, and keyword details associated with that gclid.

This gives you guaranteed control over the attribution data, ensures the gclid is permanently stored against the contact in HubSpot, and enables you to use HubSpot's own features to build contact lists and workflows based on specific Google Ad performance.

This comment was generated with the assistance of an AI tool, incorporating my expertise in conversion tracking 🙂

Re: How to find out what contact converted on Google Ads

azisbak — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 04:37:09 GMT

Hey Paula

The reason you can't see which specific contact converted is because Google Ads only shows aggregate data (clicks, conversions, cost, etc.) and doesn't tie conversions to individual email addresses or contacts. That's by design on Google's end.

To solve this, you need to capture the Google Ads data (UTM parameters, GCLID, etc.) at the individual contact level in HubSpot. The way to do this is to put UTM parameters behind your Google Ads (using tracking templates) and then make sure those UTMs are captured with each form submission and stored on the contact record in HubSpot.

HubSpot does have built-in UTM fields, but they only capture the UTMs if the contact completes a form on the exact same page they land on. If they browse around your site first, the UTMs are lost. So this approach isn't ideal.

There are tools that solve this problem (like Attributer.io, which I founded). Attributer stores the UTM parameters and GCLID when the visitor first arrives, and then writes them into hidden fields when they eventually submit a HubSpot form (or any other form tool you are using). So regardless of how much they browse around your site (or even if they leave and come back another day), every contact record in HubSpot will have the campaign, ad group, keyword, and other Google Ads data attached to it.

From there, you can build HubSpot reports showing exactly which contacts came from which Google Ads campaigns, how many became customers, how much revenue they generated, etc.

Hope this helps

Aaron

Re: How to find out what contact converted on Google Ads

Pumex_Infotech — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:44:58 GMT

@psusanah The second solution above explains this really well. The gclid capture and contact-level attribution pipeline it describes is the right approach, but building and maintaining that yourself (GTM server-side, HubSpot API writes, Google Ads API lookups) is a significant technical lift for most teams.

If you want that outcome without building the plumbing, Fig (figlabs.ai) has a HubSpot connector that handles this. It captures the gclid at the click, ties it back to the contact record in HubSpot when the form converts, and maps it to the actual campaign and keyword data from Google Ads. So you end up with what Paula was originally looking for, which is seeing who converted and which ad drove them, without a custom server-side build.

Sharing in case anyone landing on this thread wants the result without the engineering work.

Used an AI tool to make the sentence more crisp and clear.