You can use Search Ads 360 to report on 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.
Currencies in social accounts
As with other types of accounts, you specify a currency when you create a social engine account. Search Ads 360 assumes that the metrics you upload are in the same currency as the engine you’re uploading them to.
Track 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 view this information in Campaign Manager 360 Paid social reports and attribution reports. And because you're using Floodlight to track conversions, all of the visits and conversion data is de-duplicated regardless of how many channels contributed to the conversions.
Track using a PMD (or Facebook Marketing Partner)
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.
Track 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.
Entities are hidden until reporting data becomes available
Your campaigns, ad groups, and ads will be hidden until reporting metrics become available through click tracking and importing of metrics. After users engage with your ads, Search Ads 360 will show your campaign entities.
The generated items in Search Ads 360 are for reporting purposes only. You can't view or change their settings from Search Ads 360.
Names may be shortened in Search Ads 360
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 reports generated using Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360.
If the shortened names aren't unique, use the engine ID or Search Ads 360 ID to distinguish campaigns, ad groups, or ads.