topic Discrepancy Between Google Ads and HubSpot Stats in Ads

Discrepancy Between Google Ads and HubSpot Stats

marketinglcm — Fri, 02 May 2025 12:43:09 GMT

Hi HubSpot Support,

I'm experiencing an issue with the integration between my Google Ads account and HubSpot. Although the connection is active, the data syncing doesn't seem to be working correctly. I'm seeing major discrepancies in key metrics, which makes it difficult to analyze performance accurately.

Here are the issues I'm encountering:

Impressions, clicks, and CTR metrics are not matching between Google Ads and HubSpot.

The number of conversions and contacts reported in HubSpot is different from what's shown in Google Ads.

Because of these differences, it's currently impossible to calculate a reliable ROI.

Could you help me understand where this issue might be coming from? Are there any settings or common causes I should check on my end?

Thanks in advance for your support.

Best regards,

Re: Discrepancy Between Google Ads and HubSpot Stats

RubenBurdin — Fri, 02 May 2025 16:23:10 GMT

Hi @marketinglcm

Totally get how frustrating mismatched numbers are—the Ads dashboard is only useful if you can trust the math.

1) Start with clicks/impressions: HubSpot pulls raw ad‑network stats every ~3 h, but some Google ad types (e.g., Smart campaigns, certain YouTube formats) aren’t fully supported, so their data never syncs; make sure each campaign you’re reviewing is on HubSpot’s “supported” list (https://knowledge.hubspot.com/ads/track-and-report-on-google-ads-in-hubspot)

3 ) Conversions vs. contacts: Google counts every event you flag as a conversion, while HubSpot only counts net‑new contacts created with the HubSpot tracking cookie plus the correct UTM parameters; one person who fills two forms = one contact in HubSpot but two conversions in Google (https://knowledge.hubspot.com/ads/data-in-hubspot-ads-doesnt-match-external-ad-networks)

4 ) Five quick checks on your side: a) confirm “Tracking” is toggled on for each ad and the final URL still carries the hsa_* parameters, b) ensure Google auto‑tagging or any redirect isn’t stripping those parameters, c) verify the HubSpot tracking code is on the landing page and the cookie banner isn’t blocking it, d) align both accounts’ date ranges and attribution windows, e) check portal vs. Google Ads time zones—one day of drift can wreck ROI math.

5 ) If data stopped syncing suddenly, open Settings → Marketing → Ads → “Troubleshoot” and hit Re‑sync, or reconnect with a Google user who has full admin rights ( https://knowledge.hubspot.com/ads/troubleshoot-ad-tracking-issues)

Hope it helps.

Ruben Burdin

Real-Time Data Sync Between any CRM or Database | Founder @Stacksync (YC W24)

Re: Discrepancy Between Google Ads and HubSpot Stats

marketinglcm — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:57:12 GMT

thanks for replying sorry and for not replying before i hadn't seen it

Re: Discrepancy Between Google Ads and HubSpot Stats

Sweely — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 23:39:36 GMT

The short answer is:

Discrepancies between Google Ads and HubSpot metrics are common and often stem from differing attribution models, tracking methodologies, and data refresh cycles, especially concerning conversions which rely on accurate event tracking.

To achieve more reliable ROI calculation and data synchronization, you should consider a server-side tracking setup using a combination of the HubSpot and Google Ads APIs, Google Tag Manager, and a server-side container solution like Stape or Google Cloud Platform.

The long answer is:

This is a very common challenge when integrating advertising platforms and CRMs.

The core reason for the mismatch often lies in the different ways each platform attributes actions and the specific tracking methods being used.

For impression, click, and CTR metrics, the difference is typically due to time zone disparities, data sampling, or the varying refresh rates of the respective APIs.

Google Ads data is often considered the source of truth for these top-of-funnel metrics.

The bigger issue, which impacts your ROI calculation, is the difference in conversions and contacts.

HubSpot relies on its own tracking code and attribution model to log a "contact" or "conversion" when a user fills out a form or triggers a specific event.

Google Ads, on the other hand, attributes conversions based on its click-through or view-through windows, using its own Gtag or conversion linker.

If your HubSpot conversion events arent perfectly mapped as Google Ads conversion actions, or if cross-domain tracking or ad blockers interfere with the client-side HubSpot tracking script, youll see a divergence.

A more robust solution involves moving away from the standard client-side tracking, which can be inconsistent, to a server-side setup.

A server-side approach, utilizing the HubSpot API, the Google Ads API, Google Tag Manager, and a tool like Stape or Google Cloud Platform, allows you to take control of your data.

Instead of relying on a users browser to execute conversion events, you send the data directly from your server to both HubSpot and Google Ads.

For example, when a user triggers a conversion event like Purchase or Lead, your server-side setup in GTM captures the event.

It can then send that data directly to the HubSpot API to create or update a contact and simultaneously send the conversion data to the Google Ads API (or through the server container to the Google Ads endpoint).

This ensures that standard events like page_view, view_item, add_to_cart, and purchase are consistently recorded.

This method is more resilient to browser restrictions and ad blockers, guarantees that all necessary user parameters are correctly passed to both platforms for accurate attribution, and ultimately leads to a much higher-quality and more reliable dataset for calculating ROI.

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