Line items are the primary element in defining an ad campaign in Google Ad Manager. They contain settings that let you decide how and where ad creatives are intended to show on your website or app. Line items always belong to an order and can only belong to one order. Orders can have multiple line items.
There are many steps and possible setups for line items. The goal of this article is to help traffickers understand the general procedure for setting up line items.
If you're a trafficker and not familiar with line items, you're strongly encouraged to review About line items first. You should also be familiar with your advertiser's requirements, such as what kind of ad creative it wants to show and what sort of audience it's trying to reach.
Save a line item and come back later
Want to save a line item and come back later to work on it? The minimum you need to enter to save a line item is:
- Name
- Start and end time
- Volume (quantity, goal, or limit)
- Expected creatives (ad sizes)
You can change these at any time while you're working with your advertiser. You'll need to set up lots more to make sure your campaign runs as intended, but you can enter this minimum to get going and update other settings later.
Set up new line items
This section provides step-by-step procedures divided into sections to help you grasp line item set up. However, you're more than likely to set up your line item in a different sequence as you gather requirements and other details provided to you by your advertiser. Consider this a general outline and refer to About line items if you're unfamiliar with a setting.
Get started
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Navigate to Delivery
Orders.
- Create a new order or click the name of an existing order to go to its details.
- Click New line item.
- Select Ad type: Ad type describes the kind of ad creative you need to add later in a line item. Work with your advertiser to determine what type of display creative or video or audio creative that's required. Ad types include:
- Display (Standard)
- Display (Master/companion)
Only available in Google Ad Manager 360 - Video or audio
Learn more about ad types.
Basic details
- Enter a name for the line item. Use something descriptive and follow naming conventions for your organization.
- Under "Line item type", select the type and priority for the line item. Line item type and priority are a starting point to determine how a line item competes with other line items. Learn more about line item type and priority.
Creative details
- When you indicated ad types, you told Ad Manager the kind of ad creatives your advertiser wants. Under "Expected creatives", you now need to specify the ad sizes of these ad creatives. The sizes should align with the ad units you'll target later in the line item. Ad units represent the space on your website or app that can show ads. When ad units are set up, they also indicate the sizes they can accept for ad creatives.
Click Show creative details to add more information for the creatives if required.
Additional settings (Optional)
- In "Additional settings", you can:
- Add labels. Labels are optional and used for a variety of purposes. Learn more about labels.
- Enable the Same advertiser exception option if needed. Learn more about same advertiser exceptions.
- Include comments
- Configure custom fields
- Select a viewability partner
Delivery settings and cost
- Indicate start and end times. This is the period in which ad creatives associated with the line item will serve.
- (Optional) Set blackout dates—periods when ad requests aren't sent to line items or shared with assignment partners.
- Enter volume (quantity, goal, or limit) against which the rate is to be calculated. Volume shown varies depending on line item type selected.
- Enter the rate—this is the price negotiated with your advertiser or buyer, which is applied to the value for volume of impressions, clicks, or the goal entered.
-
(Optional) Set a discount, the amount by which the total value of the line item is to be reduced
Adjust delivery (Optional)
- Deliver impressions: sets the speed at which the impressions should be delivered for this line item.
- Display creatives: controls how creatives are displayed on a single webpage when there are multiple active creatives in a line item.
- Rotate creatives: allows you to define which creative displays as part of a rotation when multiple creatives are associated with a line item.
- Child-directed ads: allow this line item to serve child-directed ads.
- Day and time: Run line items at specific hours or days.
- Frequency caps: limits the number of times a creative can be shown to a given user within a specified time period.
Add targeting
21. Add targeting. Targeting allows you to limit where a line item shows ad creatives. Limiting where ads shows helps advertisers reach their intended users, demographic, or audience. Learn more about targeting.
22. Check inventory.
23. Click Save.
Monitor line item delivery
The Troubleshoot tab in a line item details page shows reasons why creatives might fail to deliver. If your ads aren't showing, check there to see to if settings need to be adjusted.
