Sending profits to Google Ads: Issue with Discount Calculation

Google Tag Manager Server Container
1

Hey tracking nerds, :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

I’ve set up Google Ads server-side tracking and it’s working well — I’m successfully sending profit value instead of revenue by pulling the profit data from the Stape server.

Now here’s the issue — if there’s a discount on the product (like during sales or events like Black Friday), that discount is applied to the revenue but not being reflected in the profit value.

Right now, the Stape Profit Margin variable doesn’t consider those discounts.

So my questions are:

  1. How can I calculate and apply the discount correctly to the profit value?
  2. If the discount causes the profit to go negative, and I send a negative profit (e.g., -$5) to Google Ads — will it reduce the reported conversion value?
    Like, if Google Ads shows $100 as conversion value and I send -$5 as profit value, will it update to $95?

Would really appreciate any guidance or ideas on this. Thanks a lot in advance!

2

are we talking order level or product level discount?

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This is order level discount that means total order discount. My client wants to implement POAS bidding strategy for his multiple Google ads clients. He say it won’t be matter event it’s a negative profit value.

How the discount should be counted percentage-wise and impact the profit.

For Example:
Profit: 10
Discount: 6
Final revenue (after discount): 33.99
Original revenue = 33.99 + 6 = 39.99

Discount % = 6 / 39.99 ≈ 15.0%

So if a 15% discount is applied to the Original revenue, then the profit should be reduced by 15%.

Profit: 10
Final profit = 10 * (1 - 0.15) = 8.5

This is how I’m thinking for calculating profit with discount. Is my calculation and logic correct?

4

Hey @Md_Monirul_Islam hard to comment on how exactly your discounts affect overall profitability, I trust that can be vary per individual customer/case. Especially given negative profitability is mentioned.

That is to say that:

a) on the surface your calculations seem correct
b) we probably don’t want to build all possible scenarios into the variable, therefore you can just deduct your percentage from what margin lookup returns

Let me know if this is sufficient or if you perhaps need more help

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Thank you for your feedback. I completely understand that it’s not possible to build every scenario in the margin lookup variable. I’m thinking about creating a variable template for server GTM to handle this my scenario. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks again.