Important
- Starting June 30, 2022, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit expanded text ads.
- Expanded text ads will continue to serve, and you'll still find reports on their performance going forward.
- You'll still be able to pause and resume your expanded text ads, or remove them if needed.
- We strongly encourage you to transition to responsive search ads.
- Learn more about this change to expanded text ads
Ad customizers adapt your ads to the real-time context of your potential customers, such as what they're searching for, where they're browsing, what device they're using, and when they're looking at your ad.
This article explains how to create ad customizers for text ads. You can also create ad customizers for responsive search ads.
Note: The format for ad customizers differs for responsive search ads. If you have existing business data ad customizers for text ads, you can migrate them to the format required for responsive search ads. Learn more about how to convert your ad customizers for text ads to responsive search ads
Instructions
Note: The instructions below are part of a new Google Ads user experience that will launch for all advertisers in 2024. If you’re still 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. Open your business data
The first step is to open your business data.
- In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon
.
- Click Business data.
2. Create your ad customizer
Next, you’ll create your ad customizer and add details about the type of information you’d like to customize. These details are known as “attributes”.
- Click the plus button
.
- Select Ad customizers data for text ads.
- Download the template by clicking Ad customizer data template (download CSV).
- In the spreadsheet, enter details in the 3 types of columns to determine how your customizer works:
- Ad content: This is the content that appears in your ad text. You can name these columns whatever you’d like. Use parentheses to specify the characters or attribute type of this content, such as number, text, time of date, or price. Refer to the attribute types table when finalizing your ad content.
- Duration and device: These columns determine when your ads run, which devices they show on, and other preferences. Name your columns using the standard list of attributes.
- Targeting: These columns determine what triggers your ad customizer and which campaigns and ad groups they affect. You can leave some of these columns blank if you don’t want them to affect where your customizer shows. Choose from any of these targeting attributes.
Example
Model (text)
Capacity (number) Type (text)
Start_price (price)
Sale_ends (date)
Target campaign
Target ad group
Target location
Target keyword
ProWhip 300
5
tilt-head
$199 USD
2014/05/15 20:00:00
ProWhip campaign
ProWhip 300 ad group
Mountain View, CA
Professional mixers
ProWhip 300
7
bowl-lift
$399 USD
2014/05/31 20:00:00
ProWhip campaign
ProWhip X ad group
United States
Deluxe mixer
- After you’ve finished entering your column details, convert your spreadsheet into a CSV.
- Back in your Google Ads account, name your customizer and click Select a file from your computer and choose the spreadsheet you created.
- Click Apply.
- You’ll now see the new customizer in your business data. Click on the customizer to see the details you added.
- In the spreadsheet, enter details in the 3 types of columns to determine how your customizer works:
- Click the Select a file from your computer option near the pencil icon
.
.Tip
- Make sure the text in the “Target campaign” and “Target ad group” columns match exactly with names of ad groups and campaigns in your account. If they don’t match, your data won’t be uploaded.
- It's best not to include spaces in your column header names.
- Make sure the column names for standard attributes and targeting attributes match the names provided.
3. Place a customizer in your ad text
Now that you’ve created your customizer, you can now customize your ads.
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
.
- Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
- Click Ads. You can also create an ad in the campaign and ad group targeted by the ad customizer.
- Select an existing ad to edit, by clicking the pencil icon
- Enter a curly bracket “{“ into the location in your ad text where you want a customizer to show.
- Select Ad customizer from the dropdown menu.
- Select the specific customizer you’d like to show on this part of your ad text.
- This is the format for customizers in brackets: “{=Name of customizer.Name of column/attribute}”. You can select customizers from the dropdown or directly enter your customizer name and attributes in this format.
Here’s an example of what your ad might look like with all the text that will be customized highlighted in yellow:
CookieKing Stand Mixer
Ad www.example.com
15% off mixers in our Portland store. Offer ends 6/1.
4. Edit your ad customizer
You can edit your customizer details in your business data.
- In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon
- Click Business data.
- Select the ad customizer you’d like to edit. Look for “Ad customizer data” in the “Type” column.
- To edit rows, click on the cell you’d like to update.
- To add new rows, click the plus button
- To add new columns, click Settings and open the Attributes section. You can only add new targeting attributes by creating a new customizer.
- To schedule the addition of new attributes, click Schedules and click the
- Click Save.
5. Specifications for customizer data
When creating or updating ad customizer data, you can use attributes and language codes as needed to help create your ad customizers.
Language codes| Language | Code |
|---|---|
| Arabic | ar |
| Bulgarian | bg |
| Catalan | ca |
| Chinese (China) | zh-CN |
| Chinese (Hong Kong) | zh-HK |
| Chinese (Taiwan) | zh-TW |
| Croatian | hr |
| Czech | cs |
| Danish | da |
| Dutch | nl |
| English (Australian) | en-AU |
| English (UK) | en-GB |
| English (US) | en-US |
| Estonian | et |
| Filipino | fil |
| Finnish | fi |
| French | fr |
| German | de |
| Greek | el |
| Hebrew | iw |
| Hindi | hi |
| Hungarian | hu |
| Indonesian | id |
| Italian | it |
| Japanese | ja |
| Korean | ko |
| Latvian | lv |
| Lithuanian | lt |
| Malay | ms |
| Norwegian | no |
| Polish | pl |
| Portuguese (Brazil) | pt-BR |
| Portuguese (Portugal) | pt-PT |
| Romanian | ro |
| Russian | ru |
| Serbian | sr |
| Slovak | sk |
| Slovenian | sl |
| Spanish (Europe) | es |
| Spanish (Latin America) | es-419 |
| Swedish | sv |
| Thai | th |
| Turkish | tr |
| Ukrainian | uk |
| Vietnamese | vi |
| Attribute type | Commonly used for | Characters allowed | Example value |
|---|---|---|---|
| text | ProductName | Any letters, numbers, or symbols | Hiking Shoes |
| number | InventoryCount | Any whole numbers | 11 |
| price | Cost | Any number (including decimals) and valid currency characters | $24.99 |
| date | Timestamp | yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss | 2014/08/14 17:01:00 |
Note: Attribute names shouldn’t contain spaces, symbols, punctuation, or special characters, such as wingdings, arrows, vertical bars, or other symbols. Using special characters, such as <3, =>, <=, ⇐, ⇍, ->, ⇒, », :-), :), ∞, ⋇, Ξ, ****, |, and so on, may lead to the disapproval of your ads.
| Attribute | Function | Accepted values |
|---|---|---|
| Device preference | Limits a row of data to ads that appear on smartphones (not tablets or computers). | mobile or all |
| Scheduling | The days and times of the week you want your ad customizer to be shown. | Day, start time - end time. If you wanted to schedule the time from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays, then you would enter Monday, 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM. If you want to schedule the time for multiple days, separate your days with a semicolon. For example, you could schedule for both Monday and Tuesday using Monday, 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM; Tuesday, 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM. |
| Start date | Starts serving the feed item on this date. | yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss (24-hour format) |
| End date | Stops serving the feed item on this date. | yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss (24-hour format) |
| Custom ID | Unique identifying value for a row of data. Google Ads gives each row a value called "Item ID," but you might like to create your own custom ID values that Google Ads can recognize. | Any combination of letters and numbers |
| Target location restriction | The type of targeting that's applied to the locations listed in "Target location." | Physical location or an empty cell |
| Attribute | Function | Accepted values |
|---|---|---|
| Target keyword | The keyword that should trigger this row. | Keywords with match type punctuation formatting. (for example, [flowers] for exact match). Learn more about keyword matching options |
| Target keyword text | The keyword that should trigger this row. This keyword has a match type specified in the "Target keyword match type" column. | Keywords without match type punctuation formatting |
| Target keyword match type | The match type you want applied to the corresponding keyword in the "Target keyword text" column. | broad or phrase or exact |
| Target ad group | The ad group this row's data should be used for. | Existing ad group names |
| Target campaign | The campaign this row's data should be used for. | Existing campaign names |
| Target location | The location that should trigger this row when it matches the user’s location or area of interest. | The name of the location, in any language |
| Target location restriction | The type of targeting that's applied to the locations listed in "Target location." | Physical location or an empty cell |
