Create ad customisers for responsive search ads

Important

• Starting 30 June 2022, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit ad customisers for expanded text ads as the creation of new expanded text ads will no longer be supported.
• You’ll also no longer be able to upload or edit the business data for expanded text ads.
• Existing ad customisers for expanded text ads will continue to serve until 31 May 2024.
• We strongly encourage you to transition to responsive search ads.
• Learn more about Making it easier to show the right message on search.

Ad customisers adapt your ads at a scale to what your potential customers are searching for in real time. You can define custom attributes, such as product name and price, in real time and tailor ads at scale.

Note: For responsive search ads, the setup for your ad customisers is different from text ads. Rather than using a single customiser feed with multiple pieces of ad content and targeting settings, you can create attributes or upload them in bulk for your account and set the pieces of ad content directly in your campaign, ad groups and keywords. These customisers will use the targeting settings of the ad groups, campaigns and keywords where they show. If you have existing business data ad customisers for text ads, you can migrate them to the format required for responsive search ads. Learn more about how to convert your ad customisers for text ads to responsive search ads

This article explains how to create ad customisers for responsive search ads. There are four steps to implementing ad customisers for responsive search ads:

1. Open your business data.
2. Create your ad customiser (define the ad attributes). This is how you’d categorise the dynamic text.
3. Enter attribute details (assign values at the appropriate levels). This is the actual text that will appear.

   Note: If you don’t add values, the responsive search ad with the ad customiser can’t be reviewed.

4. Customise your ad text (insert the ad customiser in your responsive search ad).

Instructions

1. Open your business data

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.

The first step is to open your business data.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click Business data.
3. Click Ad customiser attributes.
4. Click the plus button .

OPEN IN MY ACCOUNT

2. Create your customiser (define the ad attributes)

Next, you’ll add individual details about your ad that you’d like to customise. These details are known as 'attributes' and can be used across your account.

You can choose to add attributes individually or upload multiple attributes from a spreadsheet once they've been created individually in Google Ads.

Note: If you choose to upload multiple attributes from a spreadsheet, they only need to be created individually in Google Ads once.

Create attributes individually

Add attributes

1. In the 'Attribute' field, name the content that you want to customise.
   • If you’re customising the name of a product, you could enter something like 'Product'. This name can be whatever you’d like.
2. Select the 'Data type', which will determine the formatting of the text that you’re customising. Refer to the formatting best practices below.
   • If you’re customising the price of your product, you’d select Price as your data type.
   • Note: We suggest you specify data types so that the system can provide a faster and better review and approval and to prevent any delays to when the ad can start serving.
3. Click the plus button to add additional attributes.
4. Click Create to create these attributes.

Formatting best practices for data type

Data type	Commonly used for	Characters allowed	Example value
Text	ProductName	Any letters, numbers or symbols	Hiking boots
Price	Cost	Any number (including decimals) and valid currency characters	£24.99
Number	InventoryCount	Any number (including decimals)	11 or 11.5
Percent	Rate (discount rate/interest rate)	Any number (including decimals) and percent symbol	35%

Note: Attribute names shouldn’t start with an underscore (_) or contain symbols, punctuation, or special characters, such as wingdings, arrows, vertical bars or other symbols. Using special characters may cause your ads to be disapproved. For example: -, <3, =>, <=, ⇐, ⇍, ->, ⇒, », :-), :), ∞, ⋇, Ξ, ****, |, +, -, /, *, (, ), [, ], {, }, ', \, •, ‘, =, :, $, \\, etc.

Delete attributes

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.

You can delete an attribute in your business feed. Deleting an attribute will remove it from all campaigns.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click Business data.
3. Select the customiser with the attribute that you’d like to delete. Look for 'Ad customiser data' in the 'Type' column.
4. Tick the box next to the attributes that you’d like to remove.
5. Click Edit, then click Remove.

Upload multiple attributes from a spreadsheet

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Bulk actions drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Uploads.
4. Click the plus button .
5. Click Download the example template to see which data to include. Leave rows 8 to 12 under columns A to C in the template blank.
6. Select the source of your file from a spreadsheet or Google Sheets.
7. Add your attributes. Note that there's a limit of 40 ad customiser attributes that can be created.
   • Enter the name of your attribute in the 'Attribute' column.
   • Enter the characters format that your attribute uses in the 'Data type' column.
   • Enter the value that appears for your attribute in the 'Account value' column.
8. Create values (this is just an example of some of the values that you can add):
   • Enter the name of the campaign in the 'Campaign' column.
   • Enter the ad group in the 'Ad group' column.
   • Enter the keyword in the 'Keyword' column.
   • Enter the customiser name in the 'Customiser:Name' column.
   • Enter the customiser count in the 'Customiser:Count' column.
   • Enter the customiser percent in the 'Customiser:Percent' column.
   • Enter the customiser price in the 'Customiser:Price' column.
9. If you would like to remove existing values to assign default values, you should add 'remove_value' to the 'Account value' or appropriate customiser column. This will result in the customiser showing the default value.

Note: For customisers at the keyword or ad group level, you’ll need to have both 'Ad group' and 'Campaign' columns filled out. An alternative to both 'Ad group' and 'Campaign' names would be to use 'Ad group ID'. For values, make sure to prefix the attribute column name with 'Customiser:'. In our example since Name is the attribute, the column header for values must be 'Customiser:Name'.

Schedule a bulk upload

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Bulk actions drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Uploads.
4. Click Schedules, then click the plus button .
5. Under 'Source', select a source, upload the file, and select the 'Frequency' and 'Time' for the bulk upload.
6. Click Save

3. Enter attribute details (assign values at the appropriate levels)

After creating your attribute, you can add the content for your customiser. This is the text, price or number that will appear in your ads. Bear in mind, this content will have to go through the ads approval process.

To set up content for your entire account, update the 'Account value' column:

It’s important to add values because responsive search ads that don’t have a customiser value available can't be reviewed.

1. Hover over the 'Account value' column and click the pencil icon .
2. Enter the text that will show in ads that use this customiser.
3. Click Save

You can further customise this content for different campaigns (similar for ad groups and keywords):

1. Return to the Campaigns page.
2. Click the columns icon .
3. Open Ad customiser attributes and tick the box next to the customiser attributes that you want to edit.
   • For example, if you created an attribute named 'Price', select Price.
4. Click Apply.
5. You’ll see the attribute that you created as a column for all Search campaigns.
6. Edit the attribute to customise the text for each campaign by selecting 'Use custom value'. By default, the selection is 'Use inherited value', which uses the same value that you set at the account level across all campaigns.
   • If you created a retail price attribute, you’d enter the retail price of the product advertised in each campaign.

Note: For responsive search ads, customisers will use the targeting settings in this order of priority: keyword, ad group, campaign, account and default value. Default value will be used in the event that your ad customiser doesn’t show or the text exceeds the character limit.

4. Customise your ad text (insert the ad customiser in your responsive search ad)

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.

Now that you’ve created your customiser, you can use them to customise your ads.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Ads.
4. Click the plus button and select Responsive search ad.
5. Enter a curly bracket '{' into the location in your ad text where you want a customiser to show.
6. Select Ad customiser from the drop-down menu.
7. Select the attribute that you’d like to show on this part of your ad text.
8. Enter a default value for the customiser, if you’d like to specify what text will show when nothing triggers your customiser.
9. Click Apply.

Related links

• About ad customisers
• Convert your ad customisers for text ads to responsive search ads