Inventory campaigns automatically change campaign structure

In inventory campaigns, Search Ads 360 automatically adds, removes, and changes the structure of campaigns as your product inventory changes. Any metrics associated with the old campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or sitelinks do not carry over to the new items.

Here are some examples of automatic changes you'll see:

• You update the price of an item in your feed.
  If any of your ad templates use the PRICE attribute, Search Ads 360 removes the old ads that were generated with the old price and creates new ads with the new price. 
• A brand of products in inventory feed expires.
  Campaigns, ad groups, or keywords that were generated to advertise that brand are removed. If you reactivate the brand in your feed, Search Ads 360 generates new items.
• An item no longer appears in the inventory feed. Campaigns, ad groups, or keywords that were generated to advertise that item are removed. If the product reappears in your feed, Search Ads 360 generates new items.

Pausing advertising for out-of-stock items

Instead of removing campaigns, ad groups, or keywords when related inventory items are no longer found in a feed, you can set up these templates to automatically pause and unpause the items they generated when inventory items go in and out of stock. If you create ad groups, ads, keywords, or other items for specific products, you can use this pause/unpause feature to ensure that you're only advertising inventory items currently in stock.

Pausing under specific conditions

You can also set up a template to pause campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or ads when an update to your inventory data matches specific conditions. For example, you can pause ad groups when the availability of related inventory items falls below a quantity threshold you specify. 

Search Ads 360 resumes the campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or ads when an update to your inventory data no longer matches the conditions.

How often does Search Ads 360 evaluate inventory feeds?

Search Ads 360 evaluates your inventory feed and inventory templates multiple times throughout the day. Then, any  necessary changes are made based on the data in the feed. The amount of time needed to make these changes depends on the size of the campaign, the number of changes, and the timing of the changes.

To see the time and date of the most recent evaluations:

1. Navigate to an advertiser.

   Steps for navigating to an advertiser

   1. Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.

   2. In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.

   3. In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser.

   4. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

   Search Ads 360 displays the advertiser page, which contains data for all of the advertiser’s engine accounts.

2. In the left navigation panel, click Templates.
3. Click the Inventory plans tab.
4. Hover on the Templates evaluated column. 
   To see the time and date of the most recent updates to your inventory feed, hover on the Inventory updated column. 

Learn more about viewing items generated by templates.

See a history of changes made by inventory management

To see the changes inventory management has made in your advertiser:

1. View change history. 
2. Filter on the System attribute and select Inventory management.