Each Search Ads 360 advertiser and its associated Campaign Manager 360 advertiser share the same set of Floodlight settings, activities, and tags used to report conversions. This makes it possible to track conversions from both display and search advertising using a single set of tags. It also prevents cross-channel conversion funnels from counting conversions more than once (for example, conversions that start from a display click and end with a paid search click will give last-click credit to the paid search click).
When setting up a shared Floodlight configuration, it may take a few hours before Floodlight activities appear in the corresponding Search Ads 360 advertiser.
Note: Campaign Manager 360 advertisers within the same agency might share Floodlight configurations to reflect the way the agency has organized its advertising units. If this is the case for your agency, then all of the Campaign Manager 360 and Search Ads 360 advertisers that share a Floodlight configuration will use the same set of Floodlight settings, activities, and tags used to report conversions.
Differences in creating Floodlight activities
Floodlight activities you create in Search Ads 360 appear in Campaign Manager 360, and vice versa.
When you create a Floodlight activity in Search Ads 360, Search Ads 360 automatically sets the advanced properties described in the following table. You cannot view or edit these properties from Search Ads 360, but you can do so from Campaign Manager 360.
| Floodlight activity field name | Value |
|---|---|
| Counting Method (for actions) | Standard |
| Counting Method (for transactions) | Transactions |
| Activity Tag String: Cat = | Use auto generated value |
| Minimum Impressions | 1 |
| Additional fields for transactions | transaction_id and value |
Differences in reporting Floodlight conversions
Even though you can use the same set of tags and activities to track conversions from display, video, and paid search ads, Search Ads 360 only reports conversions that are attributed to paid search activity. For example, if a Floodlight activity named "Thank you page" records 10 conversions---5 attributed to display ads and 5 attributed to search ads---a Search Ads 360 report segmented by Floodlight activity would only show the 5 conversions attributed to paid search activity.
To see reports that include conversions attributed to other channels---including display and video conversions---run reports in Campaign Manager 360 that include paid search data.
Floodlight instructions are not applied in Campaign Manager 360
A Floodlight instruction manages the way data from a given Floodlight activity is reported on in Search Ads 360 without changing the actual activity. For example, you can use Floodlight instructions to convert the currency that Search Ads 360 reports for an activity, or to have Search Ads 360 place more importance on certain actions by applying a priority, or weight, to a Floodlight activity.
Floodlight instructions are not applied to Campaign Manager 360. You'll only see the results of a Floodlight instruction in Search Ads 360 reports.
Example of sharing Floodlight data
Google tag and Floodlight event snippet on the “Thank you" page
Here's a Google tag with a Floodlight event snippet installed on the page that acknowledges a purchase. You could have created this tag in Search Ads 360 or Campaign Manager 360, and then added it to your site.
<!--
Start of global snippet: Please do not remove
Place this snippet between the <head> and </head> tags on every page of your site.
-->
<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) - DoubleClick -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=DC-1234567"></script>
<script>
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments)};
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'DC-1234567');
</script>
<!-- End of global snippet: Please do not remove -->
<!--
Event snippet for Thank You on http://www.example.com/thanks: Please do not remove.
Place this snippet on pages with events you’re tracking.
Creation date: 11/01/2017
-->
<script>
gtag('event', 'purchase', {
'allow_custom_scripts': true,
'value': '[Revenue]',
'transaction_id': '[Order ID]',
'send_to': 'DC-1234567/group1/thank123+transactions',
'u1': '[Custom Floodlight variable]'
});
</script>
<noscript>
<img src="https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/activity/src=1234567;type=group1;cat=thank123;
qty=1;cost=[Revenue];dc_lat=;dc_rdid=;tag_for_child_directed_treatment=;tfua=;npa=;
ord=[Order ID]?" width="1" height="1" alt="">
</noscript>
<!-- End of event snippet: Please do not remove -->
When a user completes a purchase and lands on the "Thank you" page, the Floodlight event snippet in the Google tag records the purchase and sends data to the associated Floodlight activity. In addition to tracking the total revenue from the sale, the Floodlight activity tracks:
-
Whether the last click leading to the visit came from a display ad or paid search ad.
-
Whether there were other clicks on display and search advertising higher up in the funnel.
The data is available for reporting in Campaign Manager 360, and if the conversion is attributed to a paid search, the data is also available in Search Ads 360.
How the data appears in Search Ads 360
In this example, let's assume that a customer searched for the keyword "shirts", clicked on a paid search ad, and purchased a shirt. To see this data in Search Ads 360, you can navigate to the campaign that contains the shirts keyword, click the Keywords tab, segment by Floodlight activity, and view the metrics for the shirts keyword.
You'd see that the number of transactions for the "Thank you page" Floodlight activity has incremented by one. And you'd see additional cost and revenue associated with the conversion.
| Keyword | Floodlight activity group | Floodlight activity | Trans | Cost | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| shirts | Sales Confirmation | Thank you page | 614 | 309.79 | $1,135.00 |
If the conversion is not attributed to a paid search ad, you would not see data about it in Search Ads 360.
How the data appears in Campaign Manager 360
In Campaign Manager 360, you can do either of the following to view the data:
-
Use Report Builder to add paid search dimensions and metrics to Standard reports, and then run the report. For each Floodlight activity, the Standard report lists the number of conversions that are attributed to paid search, along with the number of conversions attributed to display ads.
In the example above, you'd see the number of paid search conversions increment by one.
Note that the Standard report uses the last-click attribution model: all credit for the conversion goes to the last click before the customer visited your site. You can use the Attribution Modeling Tool in Campaign Manager 360 to compare different models of assigning credit to display, search, and other channels.
-
Run a Multi-Channel Funnels report to report on the display ads, Search Ads 360 ads, Rich Media ads, and click trackers that contributed to conversions somewhere within the conversion funnel.