You can use Search Ads 360 to report activity that occurs before customers land on your site, such as impressions and clicks on social ads, as well as activity that occurs after clicking social ads, such as visits and Floodlight conversions.
Importing social performance and engagement metrics into Search Ads 360
Because Search Ads 360 cannot directly connect to a social engine, reporting performance metrics (such as clicks, impressions, and cost) and engagement metrics requires you to periodically sign into your PMD or social engine, export metrics, and then import the metrics into Search Ads 360. Some PMDs can schedule an export and have metrics automatically sent to Search Ads 360 on a regular basis.
If you don't send social metrics to Search Ads 360, you won't be able to see the number of clicks, impressions, and cost associated with your social ads (but you'll still be able to see visits and Floodlight conversions).
The steps you take to import performance metrics depend on the social engine and PMD you use:
- Facebook without a PMD
- Facebook and Mediaocean
- Facebook and Smartly.io
- Historical metrics for Facebook
- Twitter: performance metrics not supported
Note: Importing performance and engagement metrics isn't supported for Twitter.
Currencies in Search Ads 360 reports
As with other types of engine accounts, when you create a social engine account, you specify the currency used by the engine. Search Ads 360 assumes the cost data you import from social engines is in the engine's currency.
For revenue values reported by Floodlight activities, Search Ads 360 assumes the values are in the currency of the Campaign Manager 360 account that's associated with your Search Ads 360 advertiser. You can use Search Ads 360 Floodlight instructions to convert values to a different currency. Note that Floodlight instructions apply only to Search Ads 360 reports; they are not used by Campaign Manager 360.
Learn more about currencies in Search Ads 360.
Tracking visits and Floodlight conversions
After you onboard a social engine account, Search Ads 360 can start attributing visits and Floodlight conversions to your social ads. You don't need to import this data since Search Ads 360 collects it for you.
When you use Search Ads 360 to report on social campaigns, you'll see the number of conversions attributed to each social campaign, ad group, and ad. You can also see this information in Campaign Manager 360 Paid social reports and attribution reports. And because you're using a single system—Floodlight—to track conversions, all of the visits and conversion data is de-duplicated regardless of how many channels contributed to the conversions.
Tracking when using a PMD
Here's how Search Ads 360 tracks visits and conversions if you use a PMD to connect Search Ads 360 with a social engine:
- When you link a Search Ads 360 social engine account to a PMD, the PMD wraps the URLs in your social ads with a Search Ads 360 clickserver URL. Some PMDs also associate a viewtracker URL with social ads. The viewtracker URL tracks impressions for use by Campaign Manager 360 Paid social reports and attribution reports.
- A customer clicks a social ad and the clickserver URL redirects the click to Search Ads 360.
- Search Ads 360 records a visit and forwards the customer to the landing page originally specified in the social ad.
- If the customer visit causes a Floodlight tag to fire, Search Ads 360 reports a conversion and attributes it to the social ad.
Tracking without a PMD
Here's how Search Ads 360 tracks visits and conversions if you don't use a PMD:
- After you create a social engine account, download campaigns from the social engine and upload them into Search Ad 360. Search Ads 360 will add its clickserver URLs to the ads. Search Ads 360 will also add a viewtracker URL so Paid social reports and attribution reports in Campaign Manager 360 can include impression metrics for social ads. Then you can upload the modified campaigns back into the social engine.
- A customer clicks a social ad and the clickserver URL redirects the click to Search Ads 360.
- Search Ads 360 records a visit and forwards the customer to the landing page originally specified in the social ad.
- If the customer visit causes a Floodlight tag to fire, Search Ads 360 reports a conversion and attributes it to the social ad.
Search Ads 360 automatically creates social campaigns
Instead of requiring you to manually recreate your social campaign and ad group structure in Search Ads 360, Search Ads 360 automatically creates campaigns, ad groups, and ads as reporting metrics become available (either through importing performance and engagement metrics or click tracking).
Note that these items in Search Ads 360 are for reporting purposes only. You can't view or change their settings from Search Ads 360.
For example:
- You onboard a Facebook account with 3 social campaigns: CampaignA, CampaignB, and CampaignC.
- An ad in CampaignA generates a click.
The ad appears in AdGroup1 and is named "Summer sale." - Search Ads 360 automatically creates CampaignA, AdGroup1, and an ad named "Summer sale."
You can navigate to AdGroup1 in Search Ads 360 and see the metrics attributed to the ad. - Later, you import performance and engagement metrics.
Search Ads 360 creates campaigns and ad groups for all of the Facebook ads that were included in the performance and engagement metrics, even if those ads recorded zero impressions or clicks.
Names may be shortened in Search Ads 360 reports
To prevent its tracking URLs from becoming too long, Search Ads 360 sometimes limits campaign, ad group, and ad names to 20 characters. The names are not changed in the engine itself. The shortened names only appear in Search Ads 360 reports and Campaign Manager 360 reports.
If the shortened names aren't unique, use the engine ID or Search Ads 360 ID to distinguish campaigns, ad groups, or ads.