Enhanced Conversions: what they actually do

As browsers restrict third-party cookies, conversion measurement loses the ability to recognise that the person who converted is the same person who clicked. Enhanced Conversions address part of that gap using first-party data you already hold.

The mechanism

When a user converts and has submitted their email address — through a purchase, form or signup — the plain-text email is hashed with SHA-256 in the browser (or server) before transmission. Google compares these hashes against signed-in Google accounts associated with ad clicks, recovering conversion attribution that cookie limitations would otherwise lose.

[email protected]
  → SHA-256
  → f5e0a3c82b... (irreversible hash)
  → attached to the Google Ads conversion ping
  → matched by Google against signed-in accounts

Requirements

• —An email (or name/address) captured at conversion time and passed into the tag configuration.
• —Compliance with Google's policies — including an appropriate disclosure where required.
• —Consent-aware implementation: hashing does not override a declined consent decision.
• —Correctly configured user-provided data variables when implemented via GTM.

What it does not do

It does not create conversions that were never measured — the underlying conversion event must still fire correctly. It does not recover users who never submit an email, and it does not fix broken triggers, wrong values or missing deduplication. Treat it as a signal-quality layer on top of a healthy measurement foundation, not a substitute for one.