Introduction
With Sonar Optimize, Triple Whale integrates directly with Google Ads to automatically send enriched, first-party data to Google Ads as conversion actions. Connect Sonar Optimize to your Google Ads account and achieve a complete picture of the customers, interactions, and web conversions of your website. Follow this guide to track relevant conversions from your store and optimize your Google Ads campaigns based on real-time data.
Once Enabled, Sonar Optimize will:
Ensure that every conversion is captured by Google
Enrich more conversions with first-party data, enabling Google to better target relevant customers
Sonar Optimize for Headless Shopify stores, BigCommerce stores, and WooCommerce stores
Please note that Headless Shopify stores as well as stores built on BigCommerce or WooCommerce will require developer implementation in order to enable Sonar Optimize. See the relevant documentation:
Configuring Sonar Optimize
Head to Sonar settings > Google Ads. Click Save and Continue to begin the self-setup.
1. Get Started
Begin your Sonar Optimize setup by enabling the following two Pixel components:
Theme App Embed
Web Pixel Extension
If you have an alternative Pixel installation (such as Headless), select that option to skip this step.
2. Connect Dataset
Select the Google Ads Account you’d like to connect to receive Sonar Optimize enrichment.
If you are not seeing your account , you may need to disconnect and reconnect your Google Ads account in order to grant the additional permissions needed for Sonar Optimize.
3. Enable Enhanced Conversions for Leads
To send enriched conversions to Google, you must first enable Enhanced Conversions for Leads on your Google Ads account.
First, open your Google Ads account and head to Goals > Conversions > Settings
Open Customer data terms. Review the policy and accept the terms. Click Save.
Can't Access the Customer Data Terms?
If you cannot view the customer data terms, your ad account's conversions are managed by a Manager account. You will need to accept the terms from within the Manager account.
Next, open the Enhanced Conversions for Leads section. Check the box to "Turn on enhanced conversions for leads". For Method, select Google tag. Click Save.
You have now enabled enhanced conversions for leads. Return to Triple Whale to continue configuring Sonar Optimize.
4. Send Events for Enrichment
Select which events you want to send to Google Ads. For optimal results, it is recommended you send every event back to Google Ads. By default, Triple Whale will send all events.
These are the events you can send to Google Ads:
Page View
Add to Cart
Initiate Checkout
Purchase
New Customer Purchase
Return Customer Purchase
Attribution Passback (Triple Attribution)
Triple Whale Attribution Passback TA (enabled)
Attribution Passback (First Click)
Attribution Passback (Last Click)
Attribution Passback (Linear Paid)
Attribution Passback (Linear All)
We recommend creating a new Conversion Action for every event you wish to sync from Triple Whale to Google Ads.
Begin as Secondary Actions
We recommend that you configure your Sonar actions as Secondary actions initially and collect data before switching them to Primary Actions.
If you wish to use Sonar Optimize events for ad bidding optimization, you must set your Sonar Conversion Action to Primary. However, we recommend initially that you set up your Sonar actions as Secondary, and allow them to collect data for some time (2-3 weeks depending on the volume of conversions) before switching them to Primary.
Why?
Once you set any of your new Sonar Conversions Actions as Primary, any live campaigns that are optimizing against the relevant Goal category will adjust their bidding strategy for this new primary action. Allowing these actions to collect data for some time before switching to Primary actions will ensure that Google has enough information to effectively optimize your ads.
When you are ready to switch to optimizing against your Sonar data, in most cases, you will only want to have one Primary action enabled for each Goal category, so you will want to convert your other Primary actions as Secondary.
For more about optimization settings, see Google’s support article.
5. Exclude Events For Enrichment
By default, any purchase event sent to Meta will be used to measure and optimize your campaigns. To avoid sending purchase events unrelated to your Meta campaigns, you can exclude them by order tag or Shopify sales channel.
If your shop offers subscription orders, you can map first subscription orders and recurring subscription orders back to Meta. By doing so, recurring subscription purchases will be excluded from being sent to Meta.
Triple Whale excludes certain Sales Channels from the conversion events that it transmits (draft orders, PoS orders, returns, meta shop orders, and shop app orders). You can also choose to exclude certain conversion events from being sent to Meta based on order tags and/or sales channel.
To exclude a custom Sales channel, you must provide the channel name and the channel code. If you aren't sure about your channel code, refer to our article: Shopify Sales Channel Names and Codes, or reach out to Triple Whale support.
6. Validate Setup
Once you are satisfied with the configuration settings, click Save Configuration. Although we will automatically monitor and validate setup for you, you can manually validate the setup in two ways:
Confirm Sonar Optimize is sending events: View your Google Ads Delivery Overview to see if the total events sent column is being populated. You may need to wait 24 hours or more to see if events are being sent.
Confirm Google Ads is receiving events: Go to your Google Ads Manager and confirm that you are receiving server events for your connected dataset.
Navigate to your Conversions summary page and locate the Conversion Actions mapped to your Sonar Events. Ensure that the Status is showing Active. Validate that the event is receiving conversion data by looking at the All Conversions column.
Monitor your Action Status
In Google, ensure that the status remains Active and that no Sonar conversion actions display Needs Attention. If you see a Needs Attention warning, review the Google Troubleshooting Steps in the Actions column.
Delivery Overview
Once Sonar Optimize is enabled for Google Ads, you can easily monitor the data transmission via Google Ads' CAPI within Triple Whale. In Sonar Settings, click View Details to access the Delivery Overview page. Here, you will see a data table that displays the total number of enriched events, broken out by event type over the chosen time frame. This tells you what data Triple Whale is broadcasting to Google Ads.
Enable your Sonar Events for Bidding Optimization
If you set your new conversion actions as Secondary during your initial setup:
To allow Google to use the new conversion actions you created for your Sonar events for bidding optimization, you will need to update their optimization settings to make them Primary actions.
Navigate to Goals > Conversions > Summary in your Google Ads account
For each Sonar conversion action you created: locate it in the table and click on the Conversion Action name to go to the edit screen for the conversion action.
Click Edit and Select “Primary action used for bidding optimization” in the Action Optimization menu. Click Save.
Disable Existing Primary Action
Typically, you should only have one Primary Action configured for each Goal category in your Google Ads account. To ensure that you don’t optimize for duplicate conversions, it is important to disable your existing Primary Action.
When completed, your Sonar action should be labeled as Primary and any other actions as Secondary.