How to Track Offline Conversions in DV360

When it comes to digital advertising, measuring success usually feels straightforward. A user clicks on an ad, visits your website, and makes a purchase. That purchase is recorded as a conversion, and you can easily attribute it to the campaign that drove it. However, in the real world, not every conversion happens online. Many businesses rely heavily on offline sales, store visits, phone bookings, or even in-person consultations. For these businesses, tracking offline conversions becomes a critical part of understanding the true impact of digital campaigns.

Google’s Display and Video 360 (DV360), a part of the Google Marketing Platform, is designed to help advertisers run sophisticated programmatic campaigns. What many marketers do not realize is that DV360 also offers a way to track and measure offline conversions. This capability helps bridge the gap between online advertising and offline business outcomes, giving you a more complete picture of return on investment.

In this blog, we will explore in detail what offline conversions are, why they matter, and how you can track them in DV360. We will also share best practices and an example scenario to make it easier to understand.

What Are Offline Conversions?

Offline conversions are business outcomes that happen outside the digital environment but are influenced by digital ads. Some common examples include:

• A customer clicking your display ad, later walking into your store, and making a purchase.
• A user watching your video ad, then calling your sales team and booking a service.
• A lead filling out a form online but closing the deal later through offline sales conversations.

In these cases, if you only rely on standard online conversion tracking, you will miss out on attributing these valuable actions back to your ads. Offline conversion tracking solves this problem by letting you import offline data and match it with your online campaigns.

Why Track Offline Conversions in DV360?

There are several reasons why offline conversion tracking is critical:

1. Full Measurement of Impact
   Digital ads often influence offline actions. If you ignore offline conversions, you are underestimating your true campaign performance.
2. Better Optimizations
   DV360 uses machine learning for bidding strategies. Feeding offline conversion data back into the system allows it to optimize towards outcomes that matter most for your business.
3. Improved ROAS Accuracy
   Return on ad spend is only accurate if you measure all conversions. Including offline sales ensures that your ROAS calculation reflects the real impact.
4. Understanding the Customer Journey
   Today’s customer journey is multi-channel. Offline conversion tracking helps connect the dots between online touchpoints and offline actions.

How Offline Conversions Work in DV360

The core idea of offline conversion tracking is simple. You first collect information about users who interacted with your ads. Later, when a conversion happens offline, you match it back to the digital user through unique identifiers, such as a Google Click ID (GCLID) or device IDs.

In DV360, this process typically involves the following steps:

1. A user clicks or views your ad.
2. DV360 records that interaction and assigns an identifier.
3. The user completes a conversion offline, such as a purchase at a store.
4. Your business collects information about that conversion, for example, through a CRM system or a point-of-sale system.
5. You prepare an offline conversion file that includes the identifier and the conversion details.
6. You upload the file back into DV360 (or Campaign Manager 360 if integrated).
7. DV360 matches the conversion with the original ad interaction and attributes it to the campaign.

By following this loop, you can connect offline sales back to your digital campaigns.

Steps to Track Offline Conversions in DV360

Now, let us go through the process step by step.

Step 1: Enable Floodlight Tracking

Floodlight tags are at the heart of DV360 tracking. They record when users take actions on your website. To connect offline conversions, you need to first implement Floodlight tags on key actions like form submissions or landing page visits.

Why? Because when a user interacts with your ad and lands on your website, Floodlight captures the unique click or impression ID. This ID is what will later allow you to match offline conversions.

Step 2: Collect Identifiers

For offline conversion tracking to work, you need to collect identifiers that can tie back to the ad interaction. Common identifiers include:

• GCLID (Google Click Identifier): Automatically generated when a user clicks your ad.
• Device IDs or User IDs: Useful when your app or CRM is linked.

For example, if you run a form on your website where users enter their details, you can store the GCLID in a hidden field of the form. When that lead later converts offline, the GCLID will allow you to match it back to the campaign.

Step 3: Store Offline Conversion Data

You need a system, usually a CRM or database, to store offline conversion data. This includes:

• The identifier (such as GCLID).
• Conversion time and date.
• Conversion value (if applicable, such as purchase amount).
• Other attributes like store location, product category, or sales representative.

The more details you capture, the better your analysis will be later.

Step 4: Prepare Offline Conversion Files

Once you have the offline data, you need to prepare it in the required format to upload into DV360. Typically, this file includes columns for:

• GCLID or other identifier.
• Conversion name (aligned with Floodlight setup).
• Conversion date and time.
• Conversion value.

It is important that the conversion names match your Floodlight activities so that DV360 knows which action you are attributing.

Step 5: Upload Data to DV360

You can upload offline conversions to DV360 in two ways:

1. Manual Upload: By creating a file in the correct format and uploading it through the platform.
2. Automated Upload: By connecting your CRM with Google’s API to push offline conversions regularly.

For businesses with high volumes of offline conversions, the automated option is more efficient.

Step 6: Verify and Analyze

After uploading, DV360 will process the data and match conversions with the original ad interactions. You can then view these results in your reports and dashboards.

This will allow you to answer questions such as:

• Which campaigns are driving the most offline sales?
• What is the true return on ad spend when including offline revenue?
• Are offline conversions happening more from video campaigns or display campaigns?

Example: Offline Conversions in Action

Imagine you are running a car dealership. You use DV360 to promote your latest SUV model with video and display ads. A user clicks on your ad and fills out a form on your website to schedule a test drive. The GCLID from that click is captured and stored along with the lead’s details.

Two weeks later, the same person visits your showroom, takes the test drive, and purchases the SUV. Your sales team logs the sale in your CRM, which also includes the GCLID.

At the end of the month, you prepare an offline conversion file with the GCLID, the sale amount, and the conversion date. You upload this file into DV360.

DV360 then matches the offline sale back to the original campaign. You now know that your DV360 campaign did not just generate leads, it actually drove high-value offline sales. This insight allows you to optimize your campaign further and increase investment in strategies that are clearly working.

Best Practices for Tracking Offline Conversions

1. Ensure Proper Tagging
   Double-check that Floodlight tags are implemented correctly on your website and that GCLIDs are being captured properly.
2. Automate Data Flows
   Where possible, connect your CRM or sales system directly to Google’s API for smoother offline conversion uploads.
3. Maintain Data Accuracy
   Incorrect or missing identifiers will lead to failed matches. Train your teams to capture GCLIDs or user IDs accurately.
4. Respect Privacy and Compliance
   When handling customer data, always comply with data privacy regulations like GDPR. Make sure you are transparent with users about how their data will be used.
5. Combine Online and Offline Data
   Do not analyze offline conversions in isolation. Always look at the combined picture of online and offline performance to get the full story.
6. Test Before Scaling
   Start with a pilot. Track offline conversions for one campaign or product category first, validate the process, and then expand.

Challenges in Offline Conversion Tracking

While the benefits are clear, offline conversion tracking also comes with challenges. Collecting identifiers consistently can be tricky. Sales teams may forget to log data, or customers may switch devices, making attribution harder. Data privacy laws also place restrictions on what information can be shared.

However, with the right systems and processes, these challenges can be overcome. The payoff is a far more accurate view of how your advertising dollars are performing.

Offline conversion tracking in DV360 is a game changer for businesses that rely on both online and offline sales. It helps bridge the gap between digital ads and real-world outcomes, ensuring that you are measuring the full impact of your campaigns.

The process may seem technical at first, involving Floodlight tags, GCLIDs, and file uploads. But once set up, it becomes a powerful tool for understanding customer journeys, optimizing campaigns, and driving profitable growth.

Whether you run a retail store, a car dealership, a travel agency, or a subscription business that closes deals through sales calls, offline conversion tracking can give you the clarity you need. By connecting the dots between digital impressions and offline sales, DV360 allows you to make smarter decisions and maximize the return on your advertising investments.