Track Paperform form submissions as conversions in Google Ads

Paperform is a great way to collect leads, bookings, and orders without needing a developer to build the form for you. But if you can't see which ad campaigns are actually driving those submissions, you're flying blind when it comes to deciding where to spend your budget.

The usual fix is Google Tag Manager, which means writing code to detect when a Paperform has been completed, then building out the triggers, tags, and variables to push that event over to Google Ads.

Some people take a shortcut and fire a conversion when someone lands on the confirmation page instead, but that approach is getting less reliable every year. Ad blockers and privacy features baked into browsers like Safari quietly swallow roughly 30% of those conversions before they ever reach Google. On top of that, Google Ads wants the lead's name, email, and phone number attached to every conversion, and a confirmation page rarely has any of that to hand over.

So what's the right way to track Paperform submissions as Google Ads conversions? Let's walk through it.

Why you need to send conversions to Google Ads server-side

Google's smart bidding engine (the tech behind bid strategies like Target CPA and Maximise Conversions) weighs up hundreds of signals, things like location, time of day, and a searcher's past behavior, to decide how much a click is worth bidding on.

That's powerful stuff, but it only works if the conversion data feeding it is accurate. Feed it bad data and Google is essentially placing bids blind.

The trouble is that the common ways of tracking conversions (confirmation page pixels, Google Tag Manager triggers) all depend on a tag successfully loading and firing inside the visitor's browser. Plenty of things get in the way of that happening.

• Ad Blockers - If a visitor is running an ad blocker, the Google tag never loads, so Google never finds out they converted.
• Privacy Features in Browsers - Safari and similar browsers limit how long a cookie set by the Google tag can stick around, often to a single day, so if someone converts a day or two after clicking your ad, Google has no way to connect the two events.
• Using multiple devices - Someone might tap your ad on their phone during a coffee break, then come back on their laptop that night to actually fill out your Paperform. Browser tracking has no way to tell those are the same person.

Server-side tracking sidesteps all of this. Instead of relying on the visitor's browser to fire an event, Converly sends the lead's information directly to Google's servers, so there's nothing for an ad blocker or a privacy setting to interfere with.

And it's not just a theoretical improvement. Google itself reports that businesses moving to server-side tracking see conversions climb by 23% on average, while cost per conversion falls by around 10%, simply because the algorithm finally has the data it needs to figure out who your best customers actually look like.

3 simple steps to send server-side conversions to Google Ads from Paperform

Here's how to get server-side conversion tracking running between Paperform and Google Ads in 3 easy steps.

Step 1: Build your Conversion Flow in Converly

Converly does the heavy lifting of connecting Paperform to Google Ads, and there's no custom code or messy setup involved.

If you've used something like Zapier or HubSpot Workflows before, this will feel familiar right away. Pick a trigger (a Paperform submission on your site), then pick the action that should follow (sending a conversion to Google Ads).

That's genuinely it. Publish the flow and you have server-side conversion tracking live in Google Ads.

Step 2: Add the Converly code to your website

Once you publish your Conversion Flow, Converly gives you a short snippet of code to drop onto your site.

You can add this through your website's header or footer, or if you're embedding Paperform inside a page builder like WordPress or Webflow, add it there so it loads on every page containing a form. If you already use Google Tag Manager for other things, you can also add it as a custom HTML tag through there.

Step 3: Test it works

Head to your live Paperform and submit a test entry to make sure everything is connected properly.

Then jump back into Converly, open the Conversion Flow you just built, click the 3 dots menu in the top right corner, and select View Logs.

Click into the log entry from your test submission to see exactly what Converly captured, including whether Google Ads accepted it.

You can go even deeper and look at the actual payload Converly sent over to Google Ads, plus the response Google sent back.

Once that test submission shows up as successfully delivered, you're done. Most people have this whole setup finished in under 5 minutes.

Why Converly is the best way to send conversions to Google Ads from Paperform

There's more than one route to getting Paperform submissions into Google Ads as conversions, so why pick Converly?

1. Easy to set up

Google Tag Manager is usually the first thing people reach for, but that route means writing code to catch the Paperform submission event, pulling the lead's name and email into the dataLayer, hashing it with SHA-256 the way Google requires, then assembling the right combination of triggers, tags, and variables.

If GTM isn't something you use every day, that's a real time sink just to get basic tracking working.

Converly skips all of that. Pick your trigger (a Paperform submission), pick your action (a Google Ads conversion), and you're finished. No code, no digging through GTM docs.

2. Not affected by ad blockers and privacy restrictions

Any browser-based approach, whether that's Google Tag Manager or a confirmation page pixel, is going to lose conversions to ad blockers and privacy-focused browsers before they even reach Google. One study looking at over 7 million conversions found tag-based tracking was missing close to 30% of them.

Converly gets around this by sending conversions straight from our server to Google's servers, so there's nothing in the browser for a blocker to catch.

3. Works across devices

It's normal these days for someone to click your ad on their phone and then finish your Paperform later on a laptop or tablet. That gap is exactly what trips up browser-based tracking, since the click and the conversion happen on two different devices with nothing linking them together.

Converly solves this by passing the lead's details (name, email, and so on) directly to Google's servers. That gives Google what it needs to match the person who converted back to the person who clicked the ad, so it can correctly attribute the conversion to the right campaign, ad group, and keyword.

4. Sends more data

On top of basic contact details like name, email, and phone, Converly also captures technical signals like the Google Click ID (GCLID), IP address, and User Agent, and hands all of that to Google Ads too.

That richer data set gives Google Ads a much better shot at correctly matching a conversion back to the person who clicked your ad, which makes your whole tracking setup more accurate.

5. Supports multiple tools and platforms

Converly connects to more than 100 form builders, website builders, scheduling tools, and chat widgets, Paperform included. From there, it can send conversion events to Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Ads, ChatGPT Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Microsoft Ads, and a handful of other destinations.

So if you add another tool to your stack, or start running ads on a new platform down the line, you're not starting your tracking setup over from scratch. Just connect the new one inside Converly and you're good to go.

6. Gives you a full conversion log and email alerts

With a Google Tag Manager setup, you might test things thoroughly when you first build it, but after that you're mostly hoping nothing quietly breaks.

Converly takes that guesswork away. Every conversion is logged, so you can always see exactly what data came in, what got sent to Google Ads, and how Google Ads responded.

You can also turn on email alerts, either for every conversion or just for failures, so you'll know the moment something stops working instead of noticing a month later when your conversion numbers have quietly dropped to zero.

3 things you can do when you properly send conversions to Google Ads from Paperform

Once Google Ads is receiving accurate conversion data from your Paperform submissions, a lot of new reporting and optimisation options open up.

1. Report on conversions by campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.

Rather than just clicks and impressions, your Google Ads account will now show conversions, conversion rate, cost per conversion, return on ad spend, and more. You can break every one of those down by campaign, ad group, keyword, ad, country, and other dimensions.

That level of visibility makes it much easier to spot which campaigns, keywords, and ads are genuinely pulling their weight, and which ones are worth cutting.

2. Switch to smart bidding strategies like Maximise Conversions or Target CPA

Manual bidding isn't the most effective way to run a Google Ads account these days. You're essentially telling Google to bid up to a fixed amount, say $3 a click, no matter who's actually searching or how likely they are to convert.

Smart Bidding takes a different approach. You give Google a target, like $45 per lead, and it handles the bidding for you, weighing up signals like device, location, age, interests, and prior behavior to bid higher on people it thinks are more likely to convert, and lower on those who probably won't.

It's an effective way to bring in more leads for less, but it only works well when it's backed by solid conversion data. Feed Google clean, accurate signals about who converted and who didn't, and it can actually learn what a good prospect looks like for your business.

Sending your Paperform conversions through Converly gives Google's smart bidding exactly the data quality it needs, so you can put it to work and start getting more leads for less spend.

3. Retarget people who visited your site but didn't convert

Reliable conversion data also lets you build remarketing audiences from visitors who reached your site but never completed your Paperform.

From there, you've got a few ways to win them back.

• Search - Increase or decrease your bids for this audience next time they search your keywords.
• Display - Serve display ads specifically to this group as they browse other sites on the Google Display Network.
• YouTube - Show YouTube ads to people who visited but didn't convert, keeping your brand front of mind and pulling them back to your site.

Wrap Up

If you want Google Ads to have accurate conversion data from your Paperform submissions, Converly is the simplest way to make it happen.

Conversions go straight to Google's servers, so ad blockers and privacy browsers never get a chance to block them, and Converly sends the full set of lead details (name, email, phone, IP address, User Agent, and more) so Google has what it needs to correctly match every conversion back to the ad click that caused it.

It takes just a few minutes to set up and comes with a 14-day free trial, so give it a try today!