A tour company’s Google Ads account was reporting very strong conversion numbers, which didn’t match the enquiries arriving in their inbox.
The cause was in Google Tag Manager. A conversion tag meant to fire only on form submission was firing on page views, so every visit counted as a conversion and the Ads bidding was optimising for the wrong thing. After fixing the trigger, I started splitting conversions into separate actions for landing page enquiries, main site contact forms and newsletter sign-ups.
My advice to anyone running ads: if your numbers look too good, be suspicious rather than pleased. Bad tracking doesn’t just give you wrong reports, it actively steers your ad spend in the wrong direction. A tracking audit is one of the cheapest ways to improve a campaign.