Custom Floodlight variables add details about each conversion that a Floodlight conversion action records, such as the genre of a movie that a user purchases, a customer value you've assigned to the user, delivery fees and more.
In the new Search Ads 360, you can use data from custom Floodlight variables to do any of the following:
- Segment
- For example, you can see the number of conversions for each movie genre that users have purchased on your site.
- Create bid strategies that focus on conversions with specific characteristics
- For example, you can create a bid strategy that places a higher weight on generating conversions that specify a customer value of 'high' and a lower weight on conversions that specify a customer value of 'low'.
- Report numeric data from your custom Floodlight variables
- For example, you can report the total delivery costs reported for all conversions.
How to use custom Floodlight variables in the new Search Ads 360
- Sign in to Campaign Manager 360 and create custom Floodlight variables.
- Add custom Floodlight variables to the Floodlight tags or event snippets on your site.
- For example, the following event snippet includes 2 custom variables (u1 and u2) that are used to report customer loyalty and delivery cost:
<!--
Event snippet for Thank You on http://www.example.com/thanks: Please do not remove.
Place this snippet on pages with events that you’re tracking.
Creation date: 11/01/2017
-->
<script>
gtag('event', 'conversion', {
'allow_custom_scripts': true,
'send_to': 'DC-1234567/group1/thank123+transactions',
'transaction_id': '012345',
'value': '129.97',
'u1': $customer_loyalty,
'u2': $shipping_cost
});
</script>
<noscript>
<img src="https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/activity/src=1234567;type=thank123;cat=group1;
dc_lat=;dc_rdid=;tag_for_child_directed_treatment=;tfua=;npa=;ord=1?"
width="1" height="1" alt="">
</noscript>
<!-- End of event snippet: Please do not remove -->
Learn about the fields that appear in event snippets. If you use the new Search Ads 360 to track offline conversions, such as sales in a call centre, you can upload the custom data from the Search Ads 360 API.
- In the new Search Ads 360, associate the custom Floodlight variables with custom metrics and dimensions.
- You can now do any of the following:
Important details about custom metrics and dimensions
Limitation on the data that you can send
For each custom Floodlight variable that you set up as a dimension, the new Search Ads 360 limits the amount and size of data available for reporting on variables.
- A custom dimension can send up to 100,000 unique values to the new Search Ads 360 for each report period.
- Each value can be up to 100 ASCII characters long.
Example
If u1 collects the city to which an order is delivered and you set up u1 as a custom dimension, u1 can't collect more than 200,000 unique cities per day. If 500 orders are delivered to Sydney and 500 to Melbourne, you've only collected 2 unique cities towards the daily limit.
Up to 100 custom Floodlight variables are available
You can create up to 100 custom Floodlight variables in Campaign Manager 360 and use all of them in the new Search Ads 360.
How long will it take to see the data in reports in the new Search Ads 360?
As a Floodlight tag reports a conversion, the custom data is available at the same time as the standard Floodlight data.
How far back does the data go?
The new Search Ads 360 doesn't backfill custom data. That is, custom data is only available starting from the day you set the data type for a variable in the new Search Ads 360, even if your Floodlight tags were recording this data before setting up the data in the new Search Ads 360.
Only some types of attribution models are supported
Learn which types of attribution models can be applied to custom metrics and dimensions.