Same Google Ads Account, Two “Truths”: What Changed When We Audited for Purchases vs Sign-ins

Introduction: one account, two scorecards

This case study comes from an anonymized, growth-focused advertiser that looks a lot like many local businesses today: a service-led operation with a website, plus app-style user behavior (people create accounts / sign in before they ever buy).

We audited the same Google Ads account over the same time window, but we changed one thing: the evaluation lens.

• Lens A: Purchase (revenue outcome)
• Lens B: Sign-in (engagement / activation outcome)

Both audits returned the same overall Growth Score (broken), the same data confidence, and the same general “waste detected” signal. But the why behind performance—and the fix list you’d prioritize—shifted dramatically.

Key takeaway: A Google Ads account can look “efficient” under an easy conversion (sign-in) while quietly failing the business under the real conversion (purchase).

The context local businesses will recognize

The business goal (as stated by leadership) was closer to: “Get paying customers.”

But the account was tracking (and bidding around) a whole menu of actions—some meaningful, some not. That’s common for local businesses that added tracking over time:

• Calls
• Form submits
• App first opens
• Sign-ins / account creation
• Purchases / bookings

The catch: Google can only optimize toward what you tell it is primary. If your primary actions are messy, Smart Bidding becomes a very expensive guessing machine.

Lens A (Purchase): the account looked expensive and unstable

When we evaluated the account on Purchase, the headline symptom was straightforward:

• Purchase CPA was materially above target
• Conversion volume existed, but the system was struggling to hit efficiency targets
• Waste was detected across multiple modules

In plain terms: the account was generating purchases, but it was doing it in a way that suggested bidding and measurement were not aligned with the real goal.

What stood out under the Purchase lens

Under Purchase, the audit surfaced a heavy concentration of problems in two places:

• Bidding & Smart Bidding Health (severe)
• Attribution & Measurement (severe)

And then a few “death by a thousand cuts” issues in targeting and creatives.

Here are the Purchase-specific patterns we see all the time in local accounts:

• Campaigns using Target CPA / Maximize Conversions while only producing single-digit purchase conversions in the month
• Keywords or asset groups spending past the CPA threshold with zero purchase conversions
• Too many “primary conversions,” which causes Google to optimize toward the easiest thing to get—not the thing that pays the bills

Diagnosis process (Purchase lens)

We typically validate Purchase performance in this order:

1. Are purchases clearly defined and prioritized as Primary?
2. Is Smart Bidding receiving enough purchase volume to learn? (rule of thumb: ~30+ per month per bid strategy)
3. Where is spend occurring with no purchase outcomes? (keywords, asset groups, campaigns)
4. Do ads and landing pages match high-intent purchase queries?

Under this lens, the answer to #1 and #2 were the real landmines.

Lens B (Sign-in): the account looked “better”… but the waste moved

When we switched the evaluation lens to Sign-in, a different story appeared.

Suddenly, the account produced a much lower CPA and far more conversions—because sign-ins happen earlier and more frequently than purchases.

This is where many local businesses get stuck:

• The dashboard looks efficient.
• The team feels like they’re “getting results.”
• But revenue doesn’t move proportionally.

What changed under the Sign-in lens

Some campaigns that looked terrible for purchases looked decent for sign-ins. A few even looked “best-in-account.”

But the audit also surfaced a different structural problem:

• Many campaigns were spending without contributing to the selected goal (sign-in)

That’s a big clue: the account had become a collection of “things we once tried,” rather than a structure designed to concentrate budget into what works now.

And while bidding health was still weak, the interpretation changed:

• For sign-ins, some Smart Bidding strategies looked more reasonable because conversion volume was higher.
• For purchases, those same strategies were statistically underfed and unstable.

Key takeaway: Smart Bidding can look “smart” when you feed it easy conversions. It gets far less smart when you ask it to optimize for rare, high-value outcomes without enough volume.

The “lens compare” view: what differed, module by module

Below is the practical comparison local businesses can apply immediately.

1) Conversion Tracking Integrity: same issue, higher business impact under Purchase

Both lenses flagged the same core problem:

• Too many primary conversions active (far beyond best practice)

Why it matters more for local businesses chasing customers:

• If sign-ins, first opens, and other micro-events are Primary, Google will happily drive lots of cheap “progress” that never turns into revenue.
• Your reported CPA looks good while customer acquisition cost quietly balloons.

What to do:

• Keep only the 2–3 strongest revenue-proxy actions as Primary.
• Move “nice to have” events (sign-ins, page views, first opens) to Secondary.

2) Bidding & Smart Bidding Health: Purchase lens exposes the instability

This is where the two lenses diverged sharply.

Under Purchase:

• Multiple campaigns were running automated bidding on too few purchase conversions.
• That typically creates volatility: the system chases noise, overpays for weak pockets of traffic, and can’t reliably hit a CPA target.

Under Sign-in:

• Some of those same campaigns had enough sign-in volume to look “fine.”

Optimization lesson:

• If your real business goal is purchase/booking, don’t evaluate bid strategy health on sign-ins.
• Either (a) consolidate to fewer campaigns so purchases per campaign rise, or (b) temporarily bid to a higher-volume proxy only if you can prove it predicts purchases.

3) Audience & Targeting Quality: waste shows up as “spend with zero outcomes”

Both lenses flagged a classic local-business leak:

• Keywords spending above the account’s CPA threshold with zero goal-aligned conversions

What changes between lenses is what you call “goal-aligned.”

• A keyword might produce sign-ins (looks helpful).
• But if it never produces purchases, it’s not acquisition—it’s traffic.

Practical fixes:

• Tighten match types on broad/loose intent keywords.
• Rebuild ad groups around tighter intent themes.
• Pause terms that repeatedly spend past your threshold without producing the goal outcome.

4) Creative & Landing Page: the same weak spots, different symptoms

The audits also flagged:

• Asset groups spending past the CPA threshold with zero goal-aligned conversions
• App-style campaigns missing key creative coverage (thin asset mix)

How this plays out differently:

• Under Sign-in, mediocre creative can still “work” because the ask is smaller.
• Under Purchase, the same creative/landing experience often fails to close.

For local businesses, the landing page mismatch is usually one of these:

• Ad promises a specific service; landing page is generic.
• Users must sign in before seeing pricing/availability.
• The page lacks trust elements (reviews, guarantees, credentials, location cues).

What we’d fix first (and why the order depends on the lens)

Here’s the part most audits miss: the fix list is not just “do everything.” It’s sequencing.

If the business outcome is Purchases/Bookings

Prioritize in this order:

1. Conversion cleanup: reduce primary conversions to the true purchase/booking actions.
2. Stabilize bidding: don’t run Target CPA on campaigns with very low purchase volume.
3. Cut obvious waste: pause/rebuild keywords and asset groups spending past thresholds with zero purchases.
4. Landing page alignment: tighten service-intent match and reduce friction between click → purchase.

This is how you stop paying for “activity” and start paying for customers.

If the business outcome is Sign-ins (legit use case)

There are real scenarios where sign-in is the right KPI (membership programs, multi-visit services, app-first flows). In that case, the priorities shift:

1. Campaign structure pruning: pause/merge campaigns spending without sign-ins.
2. Quality Score fixes: improve relevance where QS is weak (intent → ad copy → page).
3. Creative asset expansion: especially for app-style campaigns—add visual variety and at least one motion/video asset.
4. Prove the bridge metric: measure what % of sign-ins become purchases and over what time lag.

The danger is assuming sign-ins equal revenue. Sometimes they do; often they don’t.

The big lesson: your “waste” depends on your definition of success

In this account, both lenses detected waste. But the waste meant different things:

• Under Purchase, waste was largely “Smart Bidding chasing the wrong thing with too little signal,” plus spend that never produced purchases.
• Under Sign-in, waste looked more like “too many campaigns and assets spending without contributing,” plus creative gaps.

If you’re a local business owner, here’s the simple diagnostic question to ask:

• “If I cut every campaign that doesn’t produce my real business outcome in the next 30 days… what would be left?”

If the answer is “not much,” you don’t have a scaling problem. You have a measurement and structure problem.

Key takeaway: An account can be optimized, well-intentioned, and still misaligned. The lens you choose determines what Google learns—and what you believe.

How to apply this to your local business account this week

A practical 60-minute checklist:

• Audit your Primary conversions: are there more than 3? If yes, you’re likely blending goals.
• Pull a report of spend with zero conversions (for your real goal, not a proxy).
• Check each automated bid strategy: do you have enough goal conversions per month to justify it?
• Compare landing pages for your top search themes: does the page answer the query and make the next step obvious?

If you do nothing else, cleaning up primary conversions tends to make every other decision clearer.

Soft next step

If you want, you can try the VEOtool beta to run these “lens compare” audits on your own account—so you can see how performance changes when you evaluate for calls, form leads, bookings, purchases, or sign-ups.

Or, if you’d rather have a practitioner walk you through what’s actually happening, request an anonymized audit and we’ll help you identify which lens matches your real business outcome (and where the waste is hiding).