Place manual campaigns under inventory management

If you create a manual campaign with a name that exactly matches a campaign an inventory template would create in the same account, you can place the manual campaign under inventory management. This enables the inventory plan to pause or remove the campaign as inventory data changes. (Even if you leave the campaign under manual control, as long as the name matches the output of an inventory campaign template, the plan may create new ad groups and other items within the manual campaign.)

For example, if you used automated tools to generate and upload a group of manual campaigns before you decided to use inventory campaigns, you can place the manual campaigns under inventory management. Your inventory plan will then manage the campaigns as if they were originally generated by the plan.

The same is true of an ad group: if the name of an ad group and its parent campaign exactly match the output of an inventory template, you can place the manual ad group under inventory management. Even if you leave the ad group under manual control, as long as the name matches the output of an inventory ad group template, the plan may create new ads and other items within the manual ad group.) 

Existing ads, keywords, and other items cannot be placed under inventory management. However, if the parent ad group or campaign are under management, the plan will pause or remove the ad group or campaign as inventory data changes.

Convert manual campaigns and ad groups to inventory campaigns

1. Navigate to the advertiser that contains the manual campaigns.

   Steps for navigating to an advertiser

   1. Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.

   2. In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.

   3. In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser.

   4. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

   Search Ads 360 displays the advertiser page, which contains data for all of the advertiser’s engine accounts.

2. Create an inventory plan or navigate to an existing plan that generates campaigns in the same engine account as your manual campaigns.

   If you want to convert campaigns in multiple engine accounts, you'll need to create or use a separate inventory plan for each engine account. 

3. Create a campaign template that generates campaigns with the same name as your manual campaigns.

   Best practice: Start small

   Create a filter at the plan level so you're working with only a small subset of the products you advertise. Also, generate campaigns in the paused state. When you've confirmed that the plan will create campaigns, ad groups, and other items that match your manual items, remove or change the filter to include all of the products you want.

4. Create an ad group template that generates ad groups with the same name as your manual ad groups.
5. Optionally create ad, keyword, and negative templates.
6. Activate the templates.
7. Wait for Search Ads 360 to evaluate the plan's inventory feed.
   The plan will see the existing campaigns and ad groups that match your templates.
8. Enable inventory management for the manual campaigns and ad groups:

   1. In the left navigation panel, click All accounts.

   2. Select the Campaigns or Ad groups tab.

   3. Optionally add the Inventory plan column to confirm that the inventory plan detects a match between your manual campaign and the output of a template.
      For example, if Inventory Plan A would have generated a campaign with the same name as a manual campaign, you'll see "Inventory Plan A" in the campaign's Inventory plan column, even though the plan does not currently manage the campaign. 

   4. In the reporting table, select the checkbox next to the items you want to place under inventory management.

   5. Above the reporting table, click Edit ▼ and select Change inventory management status.

   6. In the Change inventory management status panel, select Enable inventory management.

   7. Click Save.
      Above the reporting table, Search Ads 360 reports the progress of the bulk edit.

Next steps

To see which items are under inventory control, view campaigns and other items generated by inventory templates.