Use placeholder keywords in "Other engines" client accounts

To report on unsupported advertising platforms before Search Ads 360 introduced engine track accounts, you needed to create an "Other engines" client account, and then create placeholder keywords in that client account.

To track conversions for engines that aren't supported by Search Ads 360, create placeholder keywords in a client account of type "Other engines." For example, you can use Search Ads 360 placeholder keywords to track conversions on social networks.

To track conversions on other advertising platforms:

1. Create an "Other engines" account.
   • Note: Only a manager or sub-manager can create an "Other engines" account.
2. Create a search campaign in the new “Other engines” client account.
3. Create an ad group in the new campaign.
   • Note: If the platform you plan to track using “Other engines” doesn’t use ad groups, you can still use ad groups in Search Ads 360 as a way to organize keywords. They won’t affect reporting. In Search Ads 360, placeholder keywords can only be created inside an ad group.

4. Create a placeholder keyword:

   1. Navigate to the ad group you created in the "Other" client account.
   2. Click the plus button above the reporting table, then select Add keywords.
   3. Add keywords in the text input area that appears.
   4. Click Save. The new keywords should appear in the reporting table.
5. Add the Final URL you want Search Ads 360 to redirect users to. This could be a page on the advertiser's site or the address of another tracking service that'll eventually redirect to the advertiser's site. There are 2 ways you can add Final URLs.
   • Update the Final URL manually by clicking on the pencil icon under the Final URL column on the reporting table.
   • Change Final URLs in bulk.
     1. Tick the checkbox on the left of the keyword you want to update.
     2. Click the Edit on the blue menu bar that appears above the table and select Change the final URLs on the dropdown menu that appears.
6. Copy the keyword's clickserver URLs:
   1. Click the Columns button above the performance summary graph.
   2. Type clickserver URL in the search box.
   3. Select Desktop Clickserver URL or Mobile Clickserver URL and click Apply.
   4. Copy the URL from the “Desktop Clickserver URL” or “Mobile Clickserver URL” column in case a separate Final URL for mobile was specified.
7. On the search engine, paste the clickserver URLs as the destination URLs for the items you'd like to track such as ads and keywords.

Paste the identifiers into custom parameters

Paste the identifiers into the custom parameters for the items you want to track.

Google Ads accounts

How does this work?

Here's an overview of how Search Ads 360 uses the placeholder keywords and custom parameters to report on display targeting items:

1. To report on activity in a Google Ads account, Search Ads 360 generates one clickserver URL for each Search Ads 360 URL template you've defined. Then, Search Ads 360 encodes the clickserver URL as part of the URL template and then traffics the template to Google Ads.
2. Google Ads saves the Search Ads 360 URL template as a tracking template.

3. When Google Ads serves an ad triggered by a targeting item, it applies a tracking template and all custom parameters in the path to the final URL.

   For example, after you define custom parameters for your placements and a final URL for an ad, when Google Ads serves the ad, it includes the custom parameters from the placement that caused the ad to display.

4. Because the tracking template contains a clickserver URL, when a customer clicks the targeting item, the click is redirected to Search Ads 360. Search Ads 360 uses information in the clickserver URL and in the _dssagcrid custom parameter to attribute the click to the placeholder keyword you created for the targeting item.
5. When you review a report in Search Ads 360, the placeholder keyword will show visits, as well as conversion data attributed to the associated targeting item in the display campaign.

All Google Ads client accounts in Search Ads 360 receive a URL template at the account level by default. This ensures that Search Ads 360 can track all items that use custom parameters and a tracking template in Google Ads. Because URL templates are hierarchical, you can also define additional URL templates at lower levels in a client account. For example, you could create a separate URL template for each ad group and specify ad-group specific parameters in the template. On the Google Ads side, Google Ads will apply the lowest-level template that's available. For example, Google Ads will apply ad-group level templates after you've defined them. Otherwise, it will apply campaign templates or the account-level template.