Google Ads - Events

By connecting your ClickPatrol events to the Google Ads Remarketing tag through Google Tag Manager, you let Google Ads see which visitors are Legitimate or Suspicious. The classification travels along as a custom parameter, which then becomes available as a condition in Audience Manager. From there you can exclude suspicious traffic from your campaigns and target the visitors that are actually worth paying for.

Use this setup when GA4 is not linked to Google Ads, or when you want to keep audience building entirely inside Google Ads. For the full audience workflow, see Google Ads - Audiences (via custom parameters).

Before you start#

Two things need to be in place first, both covered in the Google Tag Manager article:

• The ClickPatrol tag, firing on all pages
• The ClickPatrol event trigger, so other tags can react to the classification

You do not need to prepare anything on the Google Ads side. Google makes a custom parameter selectable in Audience Manager once it has actually received it.

Create the Google Ads Remarketing tag#

• In Google Tag Manager, go to Tags and click New.
• Click Tag Configuration and select Google Ads Remarketing.
• Enter your Google Ads Conversion ID.
• Tick Send dynamic remarketing event data.
• Under Custom Parameters, select Manually specify.
• Add one key-value pair: key clickpatrol_status, value {{Event}}.

{{Event}} is the built-in Tag Manager variable that holds the name of the event that fired the tag. Because this tag fires on the ClickPatrol event trigger, it resolves to ClickPatrol_Legitimate or ClickPatrol_Suspicious. If the variable is not in the list, enable it under Variables > Configure.

Set the trigger and publish#

• Click Triggering and choose your ClickPatrol event trigger.
• Give the tag a recognisable name, for example ClickPatrol Google Ads Remarketing.
• Click Save, then Submit to publish the container.

ClickPatrol events only fire on ad traffic, so this tag fires on classified visits rather than on every page view.

Verify before you build segments#

Check that the parameter is really filled before you rely on it:

• In Tag Manager, click Preview and open your site with ?source=f appended to the URL. That simulates ad traffic, so the ClickPatrol event fires.
• Select the ClickPatrol event in Tag Assistant and open your Google Ads Remarketing tag.
• Confirm that clickpatrol_status is present and holds the event name.

A common mistake is leaving Custom Parameters on None. The tag then fires and reports success, but sends no parameter at all, and clickpatrol_status never appears in Audience Manager.

Result#

Google Ads now receives the ClickPatrol classification as a custom parameter. Allow 24 to 48 hours after publishing, then build segments that filter on clickpatrol_status equals ClickPatrol_Legitimate or clickpatrol_status equals ClickPatrol_Suspicious. The step-by-step segment builder is covered in Google Ads - Audiences (via custom parameters).