Pay-Per-Click (PPC) affiliate marketing is a strategy where you pay for ads to drive traffic to affiliate products or services. Every time someone clicks on your ad and makes a purchase, you earn a commission. It’s a straightforward way to turn traffic into income without managing products or inventory.
Google Ads is one of the most powerful tools for this because it connects you with people actively searching for products you’re promoting. With its advanced targeting and flexible budgeting, Google Ads allows affiliates to reach the right audience and scale their earnings efficiently.
Even if you’re planning to work with an affiliate agency, it’s still important to understand the ins and outs of PPC yourself. Knowing how it works helps you make smarter decisions, communicate effectively with your agency, and avoid wasting ad spend.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to get started with Google Ads for affiliate marketing—from setting up your first campaign to optimizing it for better performance. Let’s dive in!
Tracking conversions is essential for understanding how your Google Ads campaigns contribute to affiliate sales. Without proper tracking, you can’t measure your return on investment (ROI) or optimize your campaigns effectively. Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up affiliate conversion tracking in Google Ads.
In affiliate marketing, a conversion could be:
Decide which actions you want to track based on your campaign goals.
1. Log in to your Google Ads account.
2. Go to Tools & Settings (the wrench icon) > Measurement > Conversions.
3. Click the + New Conversion Action button.
4. Select Website as the conversion source.
1. Enter your website URL and click Scan.
2. Under Goal and action optimization, choose the appropriate action (e.g., Purchase, Sign-up).
3. Set the value of the conversion:
Use a fixed value if every conversion is worth the same.
Use a dynamic value if sales vary (requires additional setup).
4. Define Count:
Select One if you only want to track the first conversion per click.
Choose Every if you want to count every conversion action.
5. Set the conversion window (e.g., 30 days) to define how long after a click a conversion can occur.
6. Adjust View-through conversions if desired.
7. Click Create and Continue.
Google Ads will provide two options to implement the conversion tag:
1. Install the tag yourself:
Copy the Global site tag (gtag.js) and place it in the <head> section of your website.
Add the Event snippet on the page that signifies a conversion (e.g., a "Thank You" or confirmation page).
2. Use Google Tag Manager (Recommended for Affiliates):
Select Use Google Tag Manager.
Set up a trigger for the affiliate action you’re tracking (e.g., clicks on affiliate links).
If your goal is to track clicks on affiliate links (before the actual sale), follow these steps:
1. In Google Tag Manager, create a new Tag for affiliate clicks.
2. Choose Google Ads Conversion Tracking as the tag type.
3. Enter your Conversion ID and Conversion Label from Google Ads.
4. Set the trigger to Click – Just Links and configure it to fire on affiliate link clicks.
5. Publish your changes.
1. Use the Google Tag Assistant or Google Ads Tag Diagnosis to confirm your tag is firing correctly.
2. Check the Conversions tab in Google Ads after some traffic to ensure conversions are being recorded.
Setting up audiences in GA4 is a critical step for successful Google Ads campaigns. Since audiences need time to grow, you should create them immediately after setting up conversion tracking.
You can refine these audiences by adding conditions like specific landing pages or exit pages for more targeted campaigns.
Before You Begin:
"Step 1: Track Affiliate Link Clicks with Google Tag Manager (GTM)"
Go to GTM > Tags > New
Select Tag Type: GA4 Event
Choose your GA4 Configuration Tag
Set Event Name: "affiliate_click"
Under Triggering, select Click - Just Links
Add a filter: Click URL contains your affiliate link structure (e.g., "ref=", "affiliate")
"Step 2: Create the Audience in GA4"
Go to GA4 Admin > Audiences > New Audience
Choose Create a custom audience
Include: Users with Event Name → "affiliate_click"
Exclude: Users with Event Name → "purchase"
"Step 3: Name the Audience:"
Clicked Affiliate Link - No Purchase
Click Save
"Step 1: Enable eCommerce Tracking"
If using Shopify, WooCommerce, or other platforms, install their GA4 integration plugin.
Enable purchase event in your setup.
"Step 2: Create the Audience in GA4"
Go to GA4 Admin > Audiences > New Audience
Choose Create a custom audience
Include: Users with Event Name → "purchase"
"Step 3: Name the Audience:"
Completed Purchase
Click Save
"Step 1: Create the Audience in GA4"
Go to GA4 Admin > Audiences > New Audience
Choose Create a custom audience
Include: All Users
Exclude: Users with Event Name → "purchase"
"Step 2: Name the Audience:"
All Visitors - No Purchase
Click Save
Keyword match types determine how closely a user’s search query must match your keyword to trigger your ad.
Start with phrase or exact match keywords for better control. Use broad match sparingly to explore new keyword opportunities.
Effective keyword research is crucial. Here are five strategies to find high-performing keywords:
Start conservatively with low bids and gradually increase them based on performance. Alternatively, starting high and scaling down can generate more data but at a higher cost.
Regularly review performance and adjust bids to balance impressions and cost. As data accumulates, consider automated bidding strategies like Target ROAS or Target CPA.
Prevent wasting ad spend by excluding users who have already converted:
Target users who clicked but didn’t convert:
Reach users similar to your converters:
For Display Campaigns, you can target specific websites where your ads will appear:
Ad assets (formerly known as extensions) improve visibility and click-through rates. Use a variety of assets to enhance ad performance:
Benefits:
When running Google Ads campaigns for affiliate marketing, monitoring performance is crucial to understanding what works and optimizing for better results. While there are many tools available, the simplest and most effective place to monitor performance is within the Google Ads platform itself. It provides real-time data and actionable insights to help you fine-tune your campaigns quickly.
Here’s a breakdown of the best platforms to monitor your campaigns and some tips for getting started.
Besides Google Ads, you can leverage the following tools to monitor and analyze your campaign performance:
Google Ads provides all the essential metrics and tools in one place, making it easier to:
Depending on the phase of your campaign, the following metrics are critical:
Orientation Stage
Optimization Stage
Scaling Stage
A general setup might include metrics like:
Custom columns allow you to tailor your dashboard to highlight the metrics most relevant to affiliate marketing. Here’s how to set up key columns like Clickout Rate and Profit & Loss:
1. Go to Settings & Billing > Conversions in Google Ads.
2. Import relevant Google Analytics goals into Google Ads.
3. Set soft conversions (e.g., Clickouts) as secondary conversion actions to avoid disrupting your conversion optimization.
1. Navigate to your campaign overview.
2. Select Columns > Modify Columns.
3. Scroll to Custom Columns and click on + Custom Column.
4. Define metrics for:
Clickouts: Use the "all conversions" metric linked to your clickout goal.
Clickout Rate: Divide clickouts by total clicks.
Profit & Loss: Calculate as Conversion Value minus Cost.
Google Ads allows segmentation based on conversion actions. This is especially useful when tracking multiple conversion types, providing a clearer picture of which campaigns are driving specific results.
Once your Google Ads affiliate campaigns start running and collecting data, the real work begins—optimization. Fine-tuning your campaigns based on performance metrics can significantly improve your return on investment (ROI) and help you scale efficiently.
Impressions indicate how often your ad is displayed. Without impressions, your ad isn’t reaching anyone, so it’s crucial to ensure your campaigns are visible.
If your campaign isn’t generating impressions, consider the following adjustments:
Once your campaign is live, increase impressions by:
To scale a successful campaign, use advanced strategies:
Google assigns a Quality Score (1–10) to each keyword, reflecting the relevance of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. A higher score leads to lower CPCs and better ad placement.
Clickout rate measures how often users click affiliate links on your landing page. High Clickout Rates increase your chances of affiliate conversions.
Tips to Boost CTR:
Conversions are the ultimate goal. To improve this metric, analyze every aspect of your campaign and landing pages.
Strategies for Higher Conversions:
Analyzing Performance:
Evaluate conversion performance across various levels:
Google’s machine learning can automate bidding strategies to maximize conversions.
This strategy focuses on driving as many conversions as possible within your budget. You can set a Target CPA (Cost per Acquisition) to control costs.
How to Calculate Target CPA:
Divide your average revenue per conversion by 2 (or slightly higher) to ensure profitability.
This focuses on generating the highest conversion value, making it ideal for affiliates tracking sales revenue.
How to Set Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend):
Are you curious about leveraging paid media for business? I’d love to help.
Alex Goldberg
Serial entrepreneur + creator of the Paid Media Affiliates course