Your target CPA is only as good as this field

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Good Morning {{first_name}}!

It’s Wednesday - and that means it’s time for your Property Playbook - an issue where we dig into your CRM’s property capabilities.

Okay, on Monday, Google rolled out the changes to their Target CPA and Target ROAS numbers, making sure you are paying exactly what you told Google you’d pay for leads and clients.

Ouch.

If you aren’t quite sure what this means, this issue is for you.

Let's get into it.

Your CRM has a wonderful field called “days to close.” And it lives on the deal object. It is always 100% filled in, and it’s a calculation field, so you don’t have to worry about a single thing.

Here’s how the calculation breaks down.

If you pull this field in a segment with lead source being ads vs. organic vs. referrals, you're able to see exactly how long your close periods are.

Here’s another ignored field: the forecast probability. This one you have to fill in yourself, and it’s a percentage number. So while you have days to close, you should also be adding a probability number onto every deal to ensure that your deal will actually move on.

This is where deal forecasting plays a big role. No one really fills this in, but forecasting is becoming a more in-demand requirement for sales teams to ensure marketing budget is spent accordingly in longer sales cycles. And with the new Google change, this makes sense.

I’m a huge fan of looking at the entire funnel. If you are only looking at your ad accounts for accurate reporting, you are losing out.

You could have good numbers in Google Ads, but if you aren’t closing anything, what’s the point? You could also have high numbers in Google Ads, a cost per lead that’s three times the industry average - but if you are closing 80% of what comes in, then awesome!

Here’s your homework for the week. Pull your Days to Close number for all Closed-Won Deals from the past quarter and segment them by lead source. And then compare those to whatever close rate your current CPA or ROAS target assumes in Google Ads.

These targets should be updated in Google Ads if they are not close. And set a recurring reminder every quarter to ensure you are staying on top of this.

🎯 Google Ads Will Enforce Your CPA Targets From Now On — The mechanics, the twelve-month lookback, and why an account that was budget-limited once last year still qualifies

🔐 HubSpot's Data-Pooling U-Turn — A default opt-in data sharing change reversed in four days, and what it says about who actually controls your CRM data

📊 HubSpot Spotlight: Full Campaign Attribution in Beta — Campaign attribution now traces contacts, deals, tickets, and custom objects instead of stopping at marketing metrics

🔍 9 Best Marketing Attribution Tools for HubSpot in 2026 — Worth a read if your CAC math depends on a tool that just pivoted its roadmap away from attribution

🛠️ Google Ads August 17 Bidding Change: What To Do Now — The audit list and the Bid Target Adjustment Tool walkthrough, straight from the source

Start using your HubSpot fields, Days to Close and The Forecast Probability, to measure your ad performance all the way through from contact creation to deal closed/won. This is truly the best metric to track, regardless of the changes your Google Ads account goes through.