Clicks to Call vs Call from Ads in Google Ads: What Actually Matters for Lead Gen

If you run lead gen campaigns in Google Ads, phone calls can look deceptively simple. Someone taps a number, the phone rings, and you have a "lead."

Inside the platform, though, not every "call" is created equal. Two of the most confusing metrics you will bump into are Clicks to Call and Calls from Ads. They sound like the same thing. They are not. And if you are assigning fixed values to calls or letting smart bidding optimize for them, this distinction matters a lot.

Here is the difference and how to set things up so you are optimizing for real conversations, not just thumb taps.

What is "Clicks to Call"?

Clicks to Call is usually tied to your location asset (formerly location extension) or other Google hosted surfaces.

Scenario: someone sees your ad, taps your business profile or location asset, then taps the phone number Google shows. That tap can fire a Google hosted "click to call" conversion.

Important nuance: this is fundamentally a click, not a qualified call:

• It does not require the call to last a certain amount of time.
• It can fire even if the call is very short, abandoned, or never truly connects.
• You typically cannot apply a call length filter to this Google hosted Click to Call conversion.

For branding campaigns or "any interaction is good" goals, this might be fine. For performance driven lead gen with fixed conversion values and smart bidding, it is noisy. You are telling Google, "These thumb taps are worth money," even if many of them never turn into real conversations.

What is "Calls from Ads"?

Calls from Ads is the more useful metric for most lead gen advertisers. This is what you get when you use call reporting and a call conversion with a minimum duration.

Scenario: your ad shows a phone number from a call asset or from your location asset with call reporting on. Someone taps the number and calls. Google forwards the call through a Google forwarding number, measures its duration, and only fires the conversion if it lasts at least X seconds, for example 45 seconds.

This is the key: Calls from Ads are qualified by time. You decide the minimum call length that usually indicates a real sales conversation rather than a mis tap or "wrong number" call.

In a lead gen context:

• Clicks to Call = someone tried to initiate a call
• Calls from Ads = someone stayed on the phone long enough to likely be a lead

When you are assigning a fixed value per lead, you want your bidding to optimize around the second one, not the first.

Why Clicks to Call Can Mess Up Your Conversion Data

If you let Clicks to Call sit in the same goal bucket as Calls from Ads, Google Ads will happily optimize for both. Smart bidding does not care that one is a qualified call and the other is just a tap. It simply sees "conversion."

That leads to a few problems:

• You inflate your conversion volume with low quality "calls."
• Your cost per conversion looks artificially low.
• You feed the bidding algorithm noisy signals, which usually means worse lead quality over time.

You end up with a dashboard that looks better than reality, while sales complains that the phone leads are junk.

How to Prioritize Calls from Ads Over Clicks to Call

The goal is simple: let Calls from Ads drive your bidding, and downgrade Clicks to Call to a secondary signal.

Here is the approach I recommend:

1. Create a proper call conversion action
   Set up a Phone Call Lead conversion with source "Calls from ads" or the current equivalent. Turn on call reporting and choose a minimum call length that reflects a real lead for your business, for example 45 seconds.
2. Assign your fixed value to this call conversion
   If you have calculated that each qualified call is worth a certain amount in expected revenue, put that value on the Calls from Ads conversion. This is the one that should steer your bidding.
3. Avoid using the "Contact" category conversion as a campaign goal
   In your campaign's goal settings, do not include generic "Contact" conversions as part of the campaign's optimization goals. That effectively pushes them into secondary conversion territory for that campaign, even if they are marked as Primary at the account level.
   
   In practical terms, this prevents Clicks to Call from being treated as equal to your proper Calls from Ads conversion in that campaign's objective.
4. Let call qualified events fire from location assets as well
   If someone taps your location asset and calls, that call can still be measured and qualified. As long as call reporting is on and the call passes your X second threshold, it should trigger your Calls from Ads conversion, not just a generic click to call metric.

The key idea is that bidding should chase qualified conversations, not clicks on phone icons.

Performance Max, Phone Calls, and Fixed Conversion Values

Performance Max complicates things by mixing Search, Display, YouTube, and more in a single campaign. That means:

• Your call assets may only show in a subset of placements.
• If the campaign is skewed toward Display and YouTube, you may see very few true Calls from Ads.
• Meanwhile, any Google hosted Clicks to Call events can appear and pollute the data if they are part of your optimization goals.

This is why you want your conversion configuration dialed in before you start assigning fixed values and relying on smart bidding. If you tell Performance Max that all calls, including short unqualified ones, are worth the same money, it will find the cheapest way to generate them, not the best way to get real leads.

Set one clear rule. Only calls that last at least your threshold, such as 45 or 60 seconds, are counted as the "lead" you care about and given a value. Everything else is either secondary or purely diagnostic.

How to Think About Call Length Thresholds

Choosing that X second threshold is part art and part data:

• If it is too short, you will count many accidental or low intent calls as leads.
• If it is too long, you will undercount legitimate quick but qualified calls.

A good starting point is to listen to actual calls and ask, "At what point do we usually know this caller is a real prospect?" If most serious calls last at least 45 seconds, that is a reasonable threshold.

You can revisit this threshold later with more data. The important part is to choose a number that reflects sales reality, not just an arbitrary round number.

The Bottom Line

If you are serious about lead generation, you cannot treat every "call" in Google Ads as equal. Clicks to Call are a weak, noisy signal. They are useful to see that people are interacting with your phone number, but they are not what you want driving your bid strategy.

Calls from Ads, filtered by a minimum call duration, are much closer to what you actually care about: a real live conversation with a prospect.

Set your conversion tracking so smart bidding optimizes for those qualified calls, keep Clicks to Call in a secondary or diagnostic role, and your campaigns and your sales team will be a lot happier.