How to Import Google Analytics 4 Events to Google Ads

Tired of optimizing your Google Ads for clicks instead of actual results? Importing Google Analytics 4 events into Google Ads bridges that gap, connecting what users do on your site directly to your campaign performance. This article provides a step-by-step guide to bring your GA4 conversion events into Google Ads so you can start measuring and optimizing for what truly matters.

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Why Is Importing GA4 Events So Important?

Connecting your ad performance to on-site actions unlocks a much smarter way to manage your campaigns. When you just rely on the standard Google Ads tracking pixel, you’re only getting part of the story. Importing GA4 events gives you a much richer, more accurate picture of your customer journey and advertising ROI.

Here are the key benefits:

• Smarter Bidding: Once you import valuable conversions (like a purchase, lead form submission, or newsletter signup), you can use them with Google’s Smart Bidding strategies. Instead of bidding for clicks, you can tell Google to bid for users most likely to become a customer, using strategies like Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).
• A Single Source of Truth: Tracking the same conversion event in both Google Ads and Google Analytics often leads to conflicting data due to different attribution models and tracking methodologies. By importing GA4 events, you designate GA4 as the primary source for conversion tracking, creating more consistent reporting across both platforms.
• Richer Audience Building: You can create powerful remarketing audiences in Google Ads based on the specific GA4 events people completed on your site. For example, you can build an audience of everyone who triggered a _begin_checkout event but not a _purchase event, and then target them with a special offer to bring them back.
• Full-Funnel Visibility: You get a clear line of sight from an ad click all the way to a final conversion. This helps you understand which campaigns, ad groups, and keywords are most effective at driving meaningful user actions, not just traffic.

Getting Started: Your Pre-Import Checklist

Before you jump into the import process, you need to make sure a few things are set up correctly. Skipping these prerequisites is the most common reason the import process fails, so double-check each one.

• Admin Access: You need to have administrative permissions on both the Google Ads account and the Google Analytics 4 property you want to connect.
• Linked Accounts: Your Google Ads account must be linked to your GA4 property. If you haven't done this yet, don't worry - we'll cover how below.
• Enabled Auto-Tagging: Auto-tagging must be turned on in your Google Ads account. This feature automatically adds a GCLID (Google Click Identifier) parameter to your URLs, which is how Google Ads and Analytics share data accurately. To check this, go to your Google Ads account, click on 'Admin' > 'Account Settings', and make sure "Auto-tagging" is checked.
• Events Marked as Conversions in GA4: This is the most critical step. Google Ads can only import events that you have preemptively marked as conversions inside GA4. You can’t just import any random event, you must tell GA4 it’s important first. We have a dedicated section for this next.

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Step 1: Link Your Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads Accounts

If your accounts aren't already linked, you need to connect them first. This process creates the data highway between the two platforms.

Here's how to do it from your GA4 dashboard:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics 4 account.
2. In the bottom-left corner, click 'Admin' (the gear icon).
3. Under the "Property" column, find "Product Links" and click on 'Google Ads Links'.
4. Click the blue 'Link' button at the top right.
5. Click 'Choose Google Ads accounts' and select the Ads account you want to link. If you don't see it, make sure you're using the same Google user email with admin access to both platforms.
6. Click 'Confirm' and then 'Next'.
7. On the next screen, you’ll configure settings. These are important:
8. Click 'Next' one more time, review your selections, and click 'Submit'. Your accounts are now linked!

You can verify the link by seeing your account listed on the Google Ads Links page with a "Linked" status.

Step 2: Mark Your Key Events as Conversions in GA4

This is the step a lot of people miss. Before an event can be imported into Google Ads, you must tell GA4 that you consider it a conversion. Let's say you have a custom event called _demo_request. Here's how you’d flag it as a conversion.

1. In your GA4 property, navigate to 'Admin' > 'Data display' > 'Events'.
2. You'll see a table of all the events being collected on your website or app. If you've been collecting data for a while, this list might be long. Find the event you want to import, like _purchase, _generate_lead, or your own custom event.
3. To the far right of the event name, you'll see a toggle under the column "Mark as conversion." Simply click the toggle to turn it on (it will turn blue).
4. That’s it! The event is now officially a conversion event in GA4.

Quick Tip: Newly marked conversions can take up to 24 hours to become available for import into Google Ads. If you complete this step and don't immediately see your event in the Google Ads import screen, just wait a day and check again.

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Step 3: Import Your GA4 Conversions into Google Ads

Now that your accounts are linked and your key events are configured as conversions, it's time for the final step: importing them into Google Ads.

1. Log in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the top navigation menu, click on 'Goals', then select 'Conversions' from the dropdown and click on 'Summary'.
3. Click the blue '+ New conversion action' button.
4. You'll be asked what kind of conversions you want to track. Choose 'Import'.
5. Select 'Google Analytics 4 properties', then choose 'Web' and click 'Continue'.
6. You should now see a list of the conversion events you marked in the previous step. You won’t see all of your GA4 events - only the ones you flipped the conversion toggle for.
7. Check the box next to the conversion(s) you want to bring into your Ads account.
8. Click the 'Import and continue' button.
9. You’ll see a success message. Your selected GA4 conversion events are now added to your list of conversion actions in Google Ads.

After the Import: Next Steps and Best Practices

Importing the conversion is just the first part. To actually make your campaigns smarter, you need to tell Google Ads how to use this new data.

Assign Your Conversion to a Campaign Goal

In Google Ads, conversion actions are grouped into 'Conversion goals' (e.g., a "Purchase" goal might contain conversions from your website and app). When setting up a new campaign, you'll choose which goal you want to optimize for.

For your new imported conversions:

1. Navigate back to 'Goals' > 'Conversions' > 'Summary'.
2. Review your goals. You can create custom goals or add your new conversion action to an existing standard goal (like "Submit lead forms").
3. When you create a new campaign, you'll select the campaign goal that includes your new GA4 conversion. This tells Google’s bidding algorithms what you want to achieve.

Set as a "Primary" or "Secondary" Action

For each conversion action, you can decide if it's "Primary" or "Secondary."

• Primary actions: These are used for bid optimization. When you use a Smart Bidding strategy, Google will actively try to get you more of these conversions. Your core conversions, like 'purchase' or 'generate_lead', should always be set to Primary.
• Secondary actions: These are for observation only. Google records them in your reporting columns but won’t use them to optimize bidding. This is useful for tracking micro-conversions, like a newsletter signup, without influencing the algorithm’s focus on your main goals.

Double-check that your newly imported conversion is set to "Primary" if you plan to optimize your campaigns for it.

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Troubleshooting Common Problems

Running into issues? Here are the usual suspects:

• "I can’t see my event in the Google Ads import list." The most likely reasons are: (1) You haven't waited 24 hours after marking it as a conversion in GA4, (2) you forgot to mark it as a conversion at all, or (3) your GA4 and Google Ads accounts are not linked correctly.
• "My conversions show 'No recent conversions'." First, make sure that the event is actually firing properly in GA4 using the 'Realtime' report or 'DebugView'. Second, check that auto-tagging is enabled in Google Ads. Without it, Ads can’t attribute on-site conversions back to your campaigns. Lastly, remember conversion data isn't immediate - it can take a couple of days to populate in Google Ads.

Final Thoughts

Connecting GA4 events to Google Ads elevates your advertising from running on guesswork to being powered by real user behavior data. By setting up this critical integration, you unlock automated bidding strategies, create more consistent reporting, and gain a much deeper understanding of which campaigns are truly driving growth for your business.

Once you’ve connected everything, the next challenge is making sense of all that data across different platforms - blending Google Ads cost/impression data with GA4 on-site behavior, and possibly CRM data to see the full picture. Our goal at Graphed is to eliminate that friction. We allow you to connect all your marketing data sources in seconds so you can instantly ask questions and build dashboards with simple, natural language. Instead of cross-referencing tabs, you can just ask, "Create a dashboard showing our top-performing Google Ads campaigns by conversion rate from GA4 for the last 90 days," and get a real-time answer instantly.