In June 2026, Google merged two previously separate features — enhanced conversions for web and enhanced conversions for leads — into a single unified toggle. For most B2B SaaS advertisers, the change is a configuration simplification rather than a behavioral one. But the consolidation exposed configuration gaps in accounts that had enabled one type and not the other, and it created confusion about which settings now control what. This post covers what changed, what it means specifically for B2B SaaS accounts running lead generation campaigns, and the three audit checks that confirm your enhanced conversions setup is working correctly.
Understanding this change matters because enhanced conversions are the measurement layer that fills in the attribution gaps left by cookie restrictions, GCLID loss, and cross-device journeys. In B2B SaaS, where buyers research across multiple devices and often submit forms weeks after the initial ad click, the share of conversions where the GCLID is unavailable or expired is higher than in consumer categories. The 2026 unified enhanced conversions toggle, when set up correctly, is the mechanism that recovers those attributions and feeds Smart Bidding a more complete picture of which ad interactions actually generated leads.
What the 2026 change was — and what it was not
Before June 2026, enhanced conversions existed as two separate settings in the Google Ads Conversion Actions UI. Enhanced conversions for web improved attribution of website conversions (form fills, page events) by capturing hashed user data from the Google tag at the moment of conversion. Enhanced conversions for leads improved attribution of lead conversions specifically — the lead form submissions in Google Ads lead forms — by accepting hashed email data from the advertiser's backend.
The June 2026 change, as documented by Relevant Audience in their analysis of the update, merged these into a single toggle that accepts user-provided data from three sources: the Google tag, the Data Manager API, and direct API uploads. The behavioral change is minimal — if both were previously enabled and configured correctly, the unified toggle essentially combines them. The practical impact is largest for accounts that had one enabled and not the other: these accounts now have a single configuration point that covers both conversion types, and any gap in the old setup is more visible.
How enhanced conversions work for B2B SaaS lead generation
When a visitor submits a form on your landing page, two things ideally happen in parallel: the Google tag fires the conversion event with the GCLID from the URL, and the tag also captures the email address (or other user-provided data) from the form field and sends it to Google in hashed SHA-256 format. Google then stores the hashed data alongside the conversion event and attempts to match it to a Google account associated with that email address.
In a scenario where the GCLID is missing — the user clicked the ad on mobile, the GCLID was stripped by a redirect, or the conversion happens later in a different browser session — Google can use the hashed email match to attribute the conversion to the original ad click. This is the attribution recovery mechanism. For B2B SaaS accounts where leads are often researched across multiple sessions and devices, the match rate achieved by enhanced conversions determines how accurate Smart Bidding's understanding of which campaigns and keywords actually generated leads is. Without enhanced conversions, every GCLID loss is a conversion that goes uncounted, which introduces a systematic bias in bidding data.
The hashed email match only works if the email address submitted in your form is linked to a Google account. For B2B SaaS buyers using corporate email addresses (company.com domains), Google account linkage rates are lower than for consumer addresses — typically 40-65%. This is a real limitation, but it is not zero, and the incremental attribution it provides improves Smart Bidding signal quality meaningfully. The approach complements rather than replaces the CRM-based offline conversion import that provides downstream revenue signals.
What the unified toggle changes for B2B SaaS accounts
For B2B SaaS accounts that were running both enhanced conversions for web and enhanced conversions for leads, the June 2026 change is primarily administrative. The tag behavior is the same; the configuration location is unified. The one substantive change is that the Data Manager API path — previously one of the routes for uploading enhanced conversion data — is now the primary API path for all user-provided data uploads, including offline conversion matching data. If you have a custom integration that was using the deprecated UploadClickConversions API endpoint (sunset June 15, 2026) with enhanced conversion data attached, that integration needs to be migrated to the Data Manager API. Our guide to the Data Manager API migration covers the specific changes required.
For accounts that had only enhanced conversions for web enabled and not for leads, the unified toggle creates an opportunity to close the gap. B2B SaaS accounts running lead generation campaigns should confirm that the unified toggle is collecting email data from lead form submissions — not just from web events. This requires that the Google tag on your landing page is configured to read the email field value before or at form submission, hash it, and include it in the conversion event payload. If the tag is only firing a standard conversion event without reading the email field, the enhanced conversions toggle being enabled in the UI does not mean enhanced conversion data is actually flowing.
Three-step audit to verify your setup after the migration
The first check is the enhanced conversions status in the Conversion Actions UI. Navigate to Tools and Settings, then Conversions, and select each conversion action used for lead generation. Under the "Enhanced conversions" tab, confirm the status shows as "Active" and that the data source is correctly identified as "Google tag" if you are using tag-based collection. An "Inactive" or "Not set up" status means enhanced conversion data is not flowing for that conversion action, regardless of what the account-level toggle shows.
The second check is the match rate report. This shows what percentage of conversions had enhanced conversion data successfully matched to a Google account. You will find this in the Conversions section under the "Diagnostics" tab. A match rate below 20% indicates a data quality problem — the hashed email values reaching Google are not matching to Google accounts, which may mean the email fields are being captured incorrectly (submitting the placeholder text rather than the actual email value, or submitting before the user finishes typing). A match rate between 40% and 65% is typical for B2B SaaS corporate email addresses. Match rates above 65% are achievable with consumer email addresses but unusual in B2B contexts.
The third check is the Tag Assistant validation. Use Google Tag Assistant (connected mode) to submit a test form and verify that the enhanced conversion data — specifically the sha256_email_address field — appears in the dataLayer push or direct tag call associated with the conversion event. If the field is absent or shows as undefined, the tag is not reading the email field correctly. The most common cause is a timing issue where the tag fires before the form field value is written to the dataLayer, or a form integration that submits via AJAX without triggering the tag. Both are fixable with tag configuration changes rather than code changes.
Enhanced conversions vs offline imports: which to use when
Enhanced conversions and offline conversion imports solve different problems and should both be in place for B2B SaaS accounts running at meaningful spend levels. Enhanced conversions improve the accuracy of conversion events that happen in the browser — they help Google correctly attribute a form submission to the right ad click when the GCLID is unavailable. Offline conversion imports provide entirely different conversion events: downstream CRM events like MQL creation, SQL qualification, or opportunity opened that happen inside your CRM days or weeks after the form submission.
The practical distinction is that enhanced conversions make your existing conversion events more accurate, while offline imports change which conversion events Smart Bidding is optimizing toward. For early-stage accounts or accounts with limited engineering resources, enhanced conversions are the higher-priority setup because they require only tag configuration changes. Offline conversion imports require CRM integration and are more complex to build and maintain. But the strategic impact of offline imports is larger: optimizing toward SQL events rather than form fills changes the entire signal Smart Bidding trains on, with downstream effects on traffic quality, bid distribution, and CAC that no tag improvement alone can achieve. Our guide to conversion tracking for SaaS covers the full measurement stack from tag setup through CRM integration.
Common implementation errors and how to catch them
The most common enhanced conversions error in B2B SaaS accounts is capturing the wrong data from the form. Some implementations read the email label text or placeholder text rather than the user-entered value, generating a stream of identically hashed values that produce a 0% match rate in diagnostics. The fix is to verify in Tag Assistant that the sha256_email_address parameter contains a unique value for each test form submission, not a repeated hash of the same string.
The second common error is enabling the toggle without verifying that the Google tag has the enhanced conversions code snippet active. The unified toggle in the UI is a permission grant — it tells Google to accept enhanced conversion data if it receives it. It does not automatically configure the tag to send that data. The tag must separately have the enhanced conversions configuration enabled, which in Google Tag Manager means having a variable configured to read the email field and pass it to the GA4 or Google Ads tag in the correct field name. Accounts where the toggle is enabled but the tag is not configured will show "Active" status in the UI but zero enhanced conversion data in diagnostics.
The third error is mismatched conversion windows between the standard conversion tracking and the enhanced conversion attribution. If your standard conversion window is 30 days but your buyers typically return to convert after 45 days, the enhanced conversion matching is also limited to 30 days, meaning the attribution recovery benefit is zero for conversions that arrive after the window. Extending conversion windows to match your actual sales cycle — covered in our post on conversion window length for B2B SaaS — applies to enhanced conversions and standard conversions equally, and is a necessary companion to any enhanced conversion setup for companies with sales cycles longer than 30 days.