Migrate assets from Google Drive to Asset Library

Google Drive image hosting is no longer supported. If you currently use Google Drive to host and manage your assets, it's important that you migrate those assets to Asset Library. Transformation will fail for profiles that include assets hosted in Google Drive.

To migrate your assets to Asset Library, you'll need to change each Google Drive URL to the asset's Asset Library path. In most cases, your feed contains too many rows to update each of them manually. Use this article to migrate your assets to Asset Library in the safest and most efficient way possible.

Step 1: Download your Google Drive assets to your computer

If you do not have your assets on your local computer yet, make sure to download them from Google Drive or install the desktop sync client Google Drive for Mac/PC. If you're using Google Drive for Mac/PC, you can choose to sync only the folder containing your assets.

Usually, the sync is done automatically to your local Google Drive folder when any new folders have been created or new assets have been uploaded to the web interface.

You can now use the assets on your local computer to upload to Asset Library.

Step 2: Upload your assets to Asset Library

On the Asset Library tab, upload your assets to Studio into logical folders to keep things organized (car images, logos, campaign-specific images, etc.). The assets can be located in either your local Google Drive folder or any other location in local storage.

If you have over 250 assets (or your assets are larger than 250 MB), we recommend you zip your files into folders of 250 assets each.

For example, if you have 1,000 assets, put them into 4 folders with 250 assets each, zip them, and upload them to Asset Library. The 250 asset limitation is only per upload, not for the actual folder in Asset Library. If it makes sense from an asset management perspective to keep all assets in the same folder (e.g. you may call the folder for all 1,000 assets "Dynamic Assets" ), then you may upload all 1,000 assets into that very same folder in Asset Library. To zip your folders, you should copy your assets from your local Google Drive to another location on your computer. You cannot zip folders in Google Drive.

It is extremely important that when uploading the files to Asset Library, you maintain the original file name and extension used in Google Drive. The migration process outlined below will NOT work if the file names in Google Drive and Asset Library do not match. 

Each asset you upload will have its own file path in the Asset Library, called a dynamic path. In the next step, you'll add the dynamic paths to your feed.

Step 3: Populate your feed with the Asset Library dynamic path

Now you'll have to populate your existing feed with your new Asset Library dynamic paths. We have designed a simple formula you can use in your feed to automate this process as much as possible. We'll use this sample feed (tab "feed1") to guide you through the migration process. 

Before you begin, please make a copy of your feed and make sure no other changes are being made to your feed at this time. The copy will serve as a backup in case there are any issues with the migration process. 

There are two options for populating your feed depending on whether you use Asset Library full paths or relative paths:

Option 1: Using Asset Library full paths

1. Identify the column in your feed that contains the Google Drive URLs that need to be updated. In the sample feed, Column C, called "url", contains your Google Drive URLs.

   Example: https://googledrive.com/host/0B3HlGYsrrnQCU0hka184cVR2T28/pizza.png

2. Identify your new Asset Library paths.

   Example: DRM_Asset:My Advertiser/AssetLibraryPath/pizza.png

   Notice how the file name and extension (i.e. pizza.png) match in both the Google Drive URL and the Asset Library path.

3. Add a new column to the feed. You can name that column whatever you want to help you remember that it contains the new Asset Library paths. You'll rename the column later in this process anyway. In this example, we have added column D and called it "assetlibraryURL".

4. In row 2 of the "assetlibraryURL" column, enter this formula:

    

   =CONCAT("DRM_Asset:My Advertiser/AssetLibraryPath/", RIGHT(C2,LEN(C2)-FIND("$$$",SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","$$$",LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/",""))))))

    

   Make sure to replace the DRM_Asset:My Advertiser/AssetLibraryPath/ section of the formula with the correct Asset Library path for your folder structure. Learn more about finding your Asset Library path. 
   
   It's also very important that you replace each C2 cell reference in the sample formula with the appropriate column and row for the image column in your feed. 

5. Click enter. You should now see an Asset Library path as follows:

   DRM_Asset:My Advertiser/AssetLibraryPath/pizza.png

6. Copy this formula down for each row in this column.

Option 2: Using Asset Library relative paths

1. Identify the column in your feed that contains the Google Drive URLs that need to be updated. In the sample feed, Column C, called "url", contains your Google Drive URLs.

   Example: https://googledrive.com/host/0B3HlGYsrrnQCU0hka184cVR2T28/pizza.png

2. Identify your new Asset Library relative paths.

   Example: pizza.png. Notice how the file name and extension (i.e. pizza.png) match in both the Google Drive URL and the Asset Library relative path.

3. Add a new column to the feed. You can name that column whatever you want to help you remember that it contains the new Asset Library relative paths. You'll rename the column later in this process anyway. In this example, we have added column E and called it "relativepath".

4. In row 2 of the "relativepath" column, enter this formula:

    

   =CONCAT("", RIGHT(C2,LEN(C2)-FIND("$$$",SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","$$$",LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/",""))))))

    

5. Click enter. You should now see an Asset Library relative path as follows: pizza.png

6. Copy this formula down for each row in this column. 

Step 4: Revert feed to its original column structure and naming conventions

1. Rename the old Google Drive column from "url" to "old_url".
2. Rename the new column with the Asset Library paths to "url". The new column is now taking the name of the original asset column, so that we can ensure no changes are required on the creative side.
3. Select and copy (Ctrl+C) all contents in the new Asset Library column, now called "url". 
4. Click in the first cell of the new Asset Library column, called "url".
5. Go to Edit > Paste special > Paste values only. If you click through the rest of the cells in the "url" column, you'll see they no longer contain formulas.
6. Delete the old Google Drive column, now called "old_url".
7. To see the final output, see tab feed2.

Step 5: Upload your feed to your existing Studio Profile

Check for any errors after re-uploading the feed. If you notice errors due to invalid Asset Library paths, that likely means that you forgot to upload some images to Asset Library. Upload the missing images to Asset Library, retransform, and those errors will go away.

1. Create a draft of your profile.
2. Remove the old feed from your profile by selecting Actions > Remove for the feed you're updating. Save the draft profile.
3. Select New Content and re-import your feed to the profile.
4. Reset the data types for your feed, making sure that the data types for the Asset Library columns are set to "Asset Library Path" and that the display setting is set to "yes".
5. Before completing the transform, ensure the element name at the top matches the element name from the published version. If they do not match the invocation codes will no longer match and the creatives will break. For Example: MY_FEED_NAME_TAB_NAME might become MY_FEED_NAME_TAB_NAME_TAB_NAME when you re-add your feed.
   
   You can edit the element name on the transform page at the top just above the ID and reporting label fields by clicking the pencil icon next to the name.
   
   After transforming, compare the generated code in Step 5 with the existing code in your creative. They should match exactly.
6. Set your targeting rules.
7. Preview your dynamic creative to make sure the updated assets are rendering correctly.
8. Publish your profile.

If you have questions on the migration, please speak with your Google Marketing Platform account representative.