GoodInbound

Report Real Leads to Ad Platforms

Ad platforms optimize toward whatever you report as a conversion. When every form fill counts, spam, bots, and sales pitches teach Smart Bidding, Advantage+, and TikTok's optimizer to buy more of the traffic that sent them. GoodInbound screens every submission first and reports only the ones labelled lead to Google Ads, Meta, and TikTok, from the server, with the click ID and hashed contact details each platform matches on.

The Ad platforms card in Settings → Integrations with Google Ads, Meta Ads, and TikTok Ads connected

Set-up guides:

How it works#

  1. The click is captured. The Lead Screen script or a GoodInbound hosted form records the ad click ID (gclid, gbraid, wbraid, fbclid, the _fbc and _fbp cookies, ttclid), the landing page, and UTM tags with the visitor's session.
  2. The submission is screened. Lead Screen labels it lead, review, spam, junk, or bot.
  3. Real leads are reported. When a submission becomes a lead, from screening or because you accepted it in the inbox, GoodInbound sends one conversion to each connected platform. Nothing else is sent.

What each platform receives#

Google Ads Meta Ads TikTok Ads
API Data Manager API, offline click conversions Conversions API Events API
Event Your conversion action Lead SubmitForm
Click ID gclid, gbraid, wbraid fbc (from fbclid or the _fbc cookie) and fbp ttclid
Also matched on Hashed email and phone, IP, user agent Hashed email and phone, IP, user agent Hashed email and phone, IP, user agent
Event ID Submission ID as the transaction ID Submission ID as event_id Submission ID as event_id
Sent An hour after the lead is accepted Right away Right away
You provide Customer ID and conversion action ID Dataset (pixel) ID and an access token Pixel code and an access token

Emails are lowercased and trimmed, then hashed with SHA-256 before they leave GoodInbound. Phone numbers are hashed too; Google and TikTok only accept numbers with a country code, such as +1 555 010 0199.

Connecting a platform#

Open Settings → Integrations. The Ad platforms card is at the top. Click Connect next to a platform and follow the steps in the dialog. Connecting checks the credentials with the platform, saves them encrypted, and switches on sending straight away.

Each connected platform has:

  • A switch that pauses or resumes sending.
  • Send a test lead (Meta and TikTok) or Check connection (Google Ads), which never counts as a conversion.
  • Update to change the IDs or the token, and Disconnect to delete them.
  • Workflow, which opens the workflow that does the sending: Real leads to Google Ads, Real leads to Meta, or Real leads to TikTok. It runs on the Lead Conversion Changed trigger. You can add steps to it, for example a condition so only one form's leads are sent.

The row also shows when the last lead was sent, or the platform's error message if a send failed.

Count each lead once#

Turn off, or set to Secondary, any conversion that still fires on every form submit, such as a Google Ads "Submit lead form" action or a Meta Lead event on the thank-you page. Otherwise spam keeps counting through that path.

If you also send leads from the browser, use the same event ID on both paths so the platform keeps one:

  • GoodInbound hosted forms do this for you.
  • On your own site, the Lead Screen script fires leadscreen:lead with event.detail.event_id and pushes goodinbound_lead with goodinbound_event_id to dataLayer. Fire your pixel from that event, with that ID, instead of from the form submit. Conversion Tracking has the code.

When a lead changes#

A submission you relabel from lead to spam before it's sent is never sent. Google Ads uploads wait an hour after a lead is accepted for this reason; Meta and TikTok are sent right away.

Once a conversion is sent, it stays in the ad account: none of these APIs accepts a retraction. In Google Ads you can retract one with a conversion adjustments upload, using the submission ID as the order ID. Send real leads to Google Ads explains how.

Requirements#

  • The Lead Screen script on the pages your ads land on, or GoodInbound hosted forms. Without a click ID, platforms can still match on email and phone, but fewer leads are attributed to the right ad.
  • Admin access to the ad account, dataset, or pixel you connect.