Configured Value vs Actual Value Mismatch
A conversion action in your Google Ads settings is configured with one value (for example a default of 50 dollars per conversion), but the Performance report shows the actual average value per conversion is more than 50 percent off (for example 150 dollars). Either the configured default is stale, the dataLayer is sending a different value than the settings expect, or the action is using a static value while real transactions are dynamic.
Why It Matters
Google Ads supports three value strategies per conversion action: no value, the same value for every conversion (a static default), or different values per conversion (transaction-specific values passed by the tag). Most accounts pick option two for actions like Lead with an "average lead value" estimate, and option three for Purchase actions where the real order total flows from the dataLayer. The mismatch finding fires when the static default in option two diverges sharply from the average reported value. That happens for two reasons. First, the account was set up with an estimated value (often a marketing-finance guess) that has not been updated as the business changed. Second, the tag is sending dynamic values even though the setting says "use the same value for every conversion," and Google is reporting the average of those dynamic values back through the report. The operational damage is in Smart Bidding. Target ROAS strategies treat the configured value as ground truth for the optimization target. If the configured value is half the real value, the campaign is bidding too low and leaving qualified traffic on the table. If it is double, the campaign is overbidding and burning budget on traffic that does not pay off.
How To Fix It
- Open the AdLint details and review each flagged action, including the configured value, the actual average from the report, and the variance percentage.
- Open the action in Tools and Settings > Measurement > Conversions and choose the right value strategy. If the underlying business event has real transaction values (purchases, paid signups), switch to "Use different values for each conversion" and pass the value from GTM via a Data Layer Variable.
- If the action is genuinely a single-value event (a Lead with no per-record monetization), update the configured value to match the rolling 90-day average from the report.
- Annotate the change date for downstream reporting.
- Wait one full conversion cycle, then verify the configured and reported values are now within 50 percent of each other.
Example
Action: "Purchase"
Configured value: 50.00 (static default)
Report average: 187.42
Variance: 275 percent
Fix: switch to dynamic values from the dataLayer.This Google Ads account has a conversion action where the configured value in settings differs from the actual average value in the Performance report by more than 50 percent. Per Google's value-based-bidding documentation, Target ROAS and Maximize Conversion Value strategies treat the configured value as the optimization target; a stale or wrong default causes campaigns to underbid or overbid against the real business value of each conversion. The two common root causes are an estimated default that has not been refreshed and a static value setting on an action whose tag is actually sending dynamic per-transaction values. Fix: choose the right value strategy for the underlying event, switch to dynamic values where transactions have real revenue, refresh static defaults from the rolling reported average, and verify the variance closes within one reporting cycle. Source: support.google.com/google-ads/answer/13064107.
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References
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