What is conversion value? How Google Ads and Meta calculate it, and why it is not your revenue

Conversion value is the monetary value an ad platform assigns to the conversions it attributes to your ads. In Google Ads it is the value you tell Google each conversion is worth — a fixed default, or the actual order amount your tracking code passes with each conversion — and it feeds the "Conversion value / cost" column and the Target ROAS and Maximize conversion value bid strategies. In Meta Ads the purchases conversion value is the total of the value parameters sent with purchase events, plus Shop sales, and Meta says it may be estimated or statistically modelled. Either way it is the platform's view: credited under that platform's attribution rules, counted on the day of the ad interaction, and overlapping with every other platform's claims. That is why ROAS calculated on conversion value usually runs higher than revenue you can bank, and why the two should be read side by side.

Conversion value in Google Ads

Google's About conversion values describes two ways to set it. The same value for every conversion is easy and suits conversion actions worth roughly the same, such as a demo request. A different value per conversion passes the real transaction amount through the tracking code; without that code, the default value you entered is used for every conversion.

Three columns follow from it: Conv. value (the total), Conv. value / cost (ROAS), and Value / conv. (the average). Two settings decide which conversions carry value at all, and on which day:

• Attribution model. Data-driven attribution is the default for most conversion actions, per Google's attribution help, so one sale's value can be split across several clicks.
• Conversion window and reporting date. The standard columns report a conversion on the date of the ad click, and the click-through window is 30 days unless you changed it (conversion windows). A sale today can add value to a day three weeks ago.

Conversion value in Meta Ads

Meta's Purchases conversion value is "the total value of purchases", calculated from the value parameters you set on the purchase standard event and from Shop sales on Meta's own surfaces. Meta adds that where purchases cannot be counted directly because of partial or missing data, statistical modelling may account for some purchases and their values, and that in some cases the metric is estimated or not calculated.

Which purchases count depends on the ad set's attribution setting — 1 or 7 days after a click and 1 day after a view, per Meta's attribution settings — so a purchase by someone who only saw an ad yesterday can carry its full value into Meta's total.

Four reasons conversion value is not revenue

None of this makes conversion value wrong; it answers a different question — "what does this platform think its ads produced?" — which is exactly what its bid strategies need. It becomes a problem when it is summed across platforms and reported as revenue.

Conversion value, ROAS and blended ROAS

Platform ROAS is conversion value divided by cost. Blended ROAS is the revenue you actually recorded — in your store or analytics, each sale once — divided by all ad spend. The gap between the sum of the platforms' conversion values and that revenue is the overlap and the modelling in one number; the ROAS calculator shows both side by side, and the break-even ROAS calculator gives the line either one has to clear.

Reading both numbers in one query

TableBI stores each platform's conversion value exactly as the platform reported it, in a column named conversion_value in the unified facts table — platform-attributed, not reconciled — and GA4's revenue in ga4_raw. With Google Ads (live) and Meta Ads (beta) connected alongside GA4, the comparison is one statement; when attributed and recorded sources are both connected, each answer's trust block carries the caveat that ad-platform revenue is attributed value rather than reconciled revenue.

# what the ad platforms credited themselves, next to what GA4 recorded
tablebi ask "SELECT
   (SELECT SUM(conversion_value) FROM facts
     WHERE platform IN ('google_ads', 'meta_ads')
       AND date > (SELECT MAX(date) FROM facts) - 28) AS platform_claimed,
   (SELECT SUM(revenue) FROM ga4_raw
     WHERE date > (SELECT MAX(date) FROM ga4_raw) - 28) AS ga4_revenue"

# platform ROAS per channel, on the platforms' own conversion value
tablebi ask "SELECT platform_label(platform) AS channel, SUM(cost) AS spend,
             roas(SUM(conversion_value), SUM(cost)) AS roas
   FROM facts WHERE platform IN ('google_ads', 'meta_ads')
     AND date > (SELECT MAX(date) FROM facts) - 28
   GROUP BY platform"

FAQ

Related guides

• Blended ROAS
• Facebook Ads vs Google Ads: one fair comparison
• ROAS calculator
• Break-even ROAS calculator
• CPA calculator

Sources

• Google Ads Help — About conversion values
• Google Ads Help — About data-driven attribution
• Google Ads Help — About conversion windows
• Meta Business Help Center — Purchases conversion value
• Meta Business Help Center — About attribution models and attribution settings

npm i -g @tablebi/cli && tablebi install