About custom Floodlight metrics and dimensions in Search Ads 360

Custom Floodlight variables add details about each conversion that a Floodlight activity records, such as the genre of a movie that a user purchases, a customer value you've assigned to the user, shipping fees, and so on.

In Search Ads 360, you can use data from custom Floodlight variables to do any of the following:

• Segment or filter conversion reports.
  For example, you can see the number of conversions for each genre of movies 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 shipping costs reported for all conversions.

How to use custom Floodlight variables in Search Ads 360

Here's an overview of setting up and using custom Floodlight variables:

1. Sign in to Campaign Manager 360 and create custom Floodlight variables.

2. Add the custom Floodlight variables to the Floodlight tags or event snippets on your site.

   For example, the following event snippet includes two custom variables, u1 and u2 that are used to report customer loyalty and shipping cost:
   <!--
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', '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 Search Ads 360 to track offline conversions, such as sales in a call center, you can upload the custom data from the Search Ads 360 API.

3. In Search Ads 360, associate the custom Floodlight variables with custom metrics and dimensions.

4. Optionally set up a segmentation group so you can use multiple custom Floodlight dimensions to filter, segment, or optimize bids. For example, if you want to segment a report by movie genre, and then further segment the report by customer value, you'll first need to set up a segmentation group. The group specifies which dimensions you plan to use in combination with each other.

5. Then, you can do any of the following:

   • Segment reports.

   • Group reporting data by dimensions on the Dimensions tab.

   • Filter the data in a Floodlight column.  

   • Use the filtered Floodlight column in a bid strategy.  

   • Create Floodlight columns that display custom metrics.  

   • Use the Search Ads 360 API to download reports that contain the data.

Important details about custom metrics and dimensions

Limitation on the data you can send

For each custom Floodlight variable that you set up as a dimension, Search Ads 360 limits the amount and size of data available for reporting on variables:

• A custom dimension can send up to 200,000 unique values to Search Ads 360 per report period.

• Each value can be up 80 ASCII characters long.

Example

For example, if u1 collects the city to which an order is shipped and you set up u1 as a custom dimension, u1 cannot collect more than 200,000 unique cities per day. If 500 orders are shipped to Boston and 500 to New York, 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 Search Ads 360.

You are limited to 50 custom Floodlight dimension variables and 50 custom Floodlight metric variables.

How long will it take to see the data in Search Ads 360 reports?

Once a Floodlight tag reports a conversion, the custom data is available at the same time as the standard Floodlight data (usually a matter of minutes).

How far back does the data go?

Search Ads 360 does not backfill custom data. That is, custom data is available starting from the day you set the data type for a variable in Search Ads 360, even if your Floodlight tags have been recording this data prior to setting up the data in Search Ads 360.

Only some types of attribution models are supported

See which types of attribution models can be applied to custom metrics and dimensions.