Tag Archives: remarketing

Announcing deprecation and sunset of Similar Audiences

On November 1, 2022, we announced our plans to sunset Similar Audiences in 2023 as we work on simplifying our existing product portfolio and strengthening our future-proof solutions in a changing privacy landscape. We expect to roll out this change in two phases for both Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts:
  1. Starting May 2023: New similar audiences segments will stop being generated, and existing similar audiences segments will no longer be added to campaigns and ad groups. Ad groups and campaigns that already have similar audience segments attached will continue to function as expected.
  2. Starting August 2023: Similar audience segments will be removed from all ad groups and campaigns. You will continue to have access to historical reporting data for similar audience segments from past campaigns.
What is the impact on Google Ads API?
Any requests that mutate entities related to Similar Audiences will start failing with errors. This includes: The data retrieved using GoogleAdsService.Search or GoogleAdsService.SearchStream requests will gradually be depleted of any references to Similar Audiences. This includes queries relying on the reports user_list, audience, combined_audience, and any others that are based on targeting, or conversion values segments or metrics. When we get closer to the sunset date, check out the deprecation and sunset guide for the exact errors that will be thrown.

What is the impact on Google Ads scripts?
Any requests that relate to Similar Audiences are impacted. Mutating requests will start failing with errors and reporting requests will start returning data depleted of any references to Similar Audiences. This includes: What should I do?
We recommend that API users manually migrate and stop using Similar Audiences before May 2023 in their calls to avoid any disruptions. You can refer to the announcement and Help Center article to learn more about migration options.

If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us through the forum or at [email protected].
Pierrick Voulet, Google Ads API Team

Update to Customer Match Uploads in the Google Ads API and the AdWords API Starting March 1, 2021

On March 1, 2021, the Google Ads API and the AdWords API will have a new upload limit for each Customer Match upload request. There is no change to the limit of the overall Customer Match audience list size.

What code do I need to change?
When uploading user identifiers for Customer Match, check that the number of user identifiers you are uploading per request is within the limit.
Google Ads API AdWords API
Limit 100,000 per request 500,000 per user list ID per request
Method OfflineUserDataJobService.AddOfflineUserDataJobOperations() AdWordsUserListService.mutateMembers()
Field userIdentifiers membersList
Error on exceeding upload limit TOO_MANY_USER_IDENTIFIERS TOO_MANY


Why is this changing?
In order to make the processing of Customer Match user identifiers more efficient, we needed to set the new upload limit.

If you have any questions while updating your code, please reach out to us on our Google Ads API and AdWords API forum.
Nadine Wang, Google Ads API Team

Live Webinar: Website Conversions & Audience Remarketing

The Google Ads API Developer Relations team will be hosting a live webinar, Website Conversions & Audience Remarketing with the Google Ads API, on December 11 at 10 AM EST (3 PM GMT).

Mark your calendar


Prerequisites
In order to get the most out of this webinar, we suggest you develop a basic understanding of the Google Ads API. In order to learn more, please visit our API Overview documentation or check out this Google Ads API Overview workshop from 2019. In addition, you may find this post useful to learn how conversion tracking works in Google Ads.

Agenda
The webinar will cover the topics below and include code walkthroughs to demonstrate how to perform different actions with the Google Ads API client libraries. We will also be hosting a live Q&A at the end.
  • What conversion actions are
  • How to create and utilize conversion actions
  • How remarketing works in the Google Ads API
  • How to define different audience types
  • How to measure audience performance
Reminders
Feel free to add the event to your calendar. In addition, you can set a reminder for the event on YouTube by clicking the “Set reminder” button on the YouTube event page.

We look forward to sharing our knowledge of the Google Ads API with you and answering your questions. If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum or at [email protected].
- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Update to Customer Match Requirements

We announced an update to Customer Match requirements in October 2018 that affects member uploads and the usage of Customer Match for campaigns on Search, YouTube, and Gmail.
  • Creating a CrmBasedUserList through AdWordsUserListService now requires whitelisting. If the account is not whitelisted, your request returns an ADVERTISER_NOT_WHITELISTED_FOR_USING_UPLOADED_DATA error.
  • Uploading members to a CrmBasedUserList results in a CAN_NOT_MUTATE_SENSITIVE_USERLIST error if the account is not whitelisted.
  • Targeting CrmBasedUserLists in accounts that are not whitelisted using CampaignCriterionService or AdGroupCriterionService results in an INVALID_ID error.
  • Serving campaigns can be affected if they are using Customer Match and the account is not whitelisted. If a campaign is only targeting Customer Match, then the campaign stops serving. If the campaign has other audiences, then the campaign continues to serve with the other audiences.
Please see the requirements for whitelist eligibility. To apply for the whitelist, reach out to your account manager. Once whitelisted, Customer Match no longer results in errors and serves normally without any further changes needed.

If you have questions, please reach out to us on the AdWords API forum.

Nadine Sundquist, AdWords API Team

Save time by applying audience lists at the campaign level

Reaching your most valuable and engaged customers at the moment they’re ready to act is critical in moving them along the path to a purchase. Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) and Customer Match can help you do that by customizing your campaigns for people who’ve previously interacted with your business. However, getting started can be time-consuming, especially if you have a lot of ad groups. To make it easier for you to manage your audience lists at scale, you can now apply them at the campaign level. 

Campaign-level audience lists also make it easy to measure and change your bid adjustments. Instead of trying to change your bid adjustments for each individual ad group, you can confidently optimize at the campaign level where you’re more likely to have enough data to make an informed decision. Learn more audience bid adjustment best practices here.

Many advertisers are already using campaign-level search audiences to save time and make better optimizations:

 “Campaign-level audiences have proven to be a great way to apply our remarketing lists at scale. Our campaigns often contain so many ad groups - using RLSA in the past required hours spent applying audiences to each one and analyzing the results by ad group. By applying them at the campaign level, we can be confident that no ad group is overlooked, while saving us time that can be better spent on helping our customers find their new home.”
– Debra Carroll, Senior SEM Manager at Redfin 
“Being able to apply all of our audiences at the campaign level has drastically simplified the process of adding lists to multiple campaigns, as most of our campaigns have hundreds of ad groups. This allowed us to apply our bid adjustments in bulk, which has resulted in smarter spending and increased ROAS from our search campaigns.”
– Nathan Eagan, PPC Specialist at Webstaurant

With campaign-level search audiences, you now have more flexibility than ever in how to engage with your customers. Learn more about using campaign-level audiences in the Help Center, and read our best practices guide to learn how you can reach the right audience with a message that resonates.  

Posted by Bhanu Narasimhan, Director of Product Management, AdWords

Source: Inside AdWords


Campaign-level positive user lists for remarketing, targeting, and bid modifiers coming to AdWords API

Positive user list criteria for remarketing will be rolling out over the next few months and supported at the campaign level. After this is enabled for your account, you will be able to use Bid Only and Target and Bid targeting settings, along with bid modifiers for these criteria, at the campaign level. While targeting settings for campaigns requires v201609 of the API, adding user list criteria and setting bid modifiers will work with all versions of the AdWords API.

You cannot set user lists at both the ad group and campaign levels at the same time. When switching a campaign from ad group-level user lists to campaign-level lists, you must first remove existing positive user list criteria from all ad groups or there will be a CANNOT_ATTACH_CRITERIA_AT_CAMPAIGN_AND_ADGROUP error upon attaching a user list to the campaign. The process for removing existing user list criteria, adding them at the campaign level, changing targeting settings, and using bid modifiers is similar to that for ad groups and is detailed in the Remarketing guide. Please note that existing code working with campaign criteria may need to be modified to handle the presence of user lists.

If you have any questions about this change, or other questions about the AdWords API, contact us via the forum.

- Chengyuan Zhao, AdWords API Team

Support for additional audiences in AdWords Search and Shopping campaigns

What's changing
Historically, some types of audiences have only been available for targeting and bidding in Display campaigns, as indicated by UserList.isEligibleForSearch = false in the AdWords API.

Starting at the end of September, 2016, both AdWords and the AdWords API will allow you to target additional audiences in Search and Shopping campaigns.

What you should do
  • Make sure that your application does not make assumptions about which user lists are available for Search and Shopping campaigns. Instead, your application should check the value of the isEligibleForSearch attribute of each UserList.
  • You can discover the audiences in your AdWords account and their eligibility for Search, Shopping, or Display campaigns by issuing an AdwordsUserListService get or query request that includes the IsEligibleForSearch and IsEligibleForDisplay selector fields. On an ongoing basis, you should periodically check for user lists where eligibility has changed due to improvements in AdWords.
  • If you'd like to add additional audience targeting to your Search or Shopping ad groups, add a BiddableAdGroupCriterion with a criterion set to an instance of the appropriate type of UserList. Make sure that your application can handle an OperationAccessDenied.OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_CAMPAIGN_TYPE error, which will occur if the particular UserList in your request is not currently available for Search and Shopping campaigns.
Further reading
For an overview of remarketing and audience targeting in the AdWords API, check out the Remarketing and audience targeting guide.

If you have any questions, please post on the forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.
- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team

Tailor your ads with dynamic remarketing – Google Best Practices


If you think people make purchase decisions quickly, think again. Today’s consumers visit websites at least 6 times, on average, in the purchase process.1 And for those who abandon a shopping cart, 75% say they intend on returning to a company’s website to make a purchase.2

We’ve created a new best practices guide, Tailor Your Ads with Dynamic Remarketing, to help advertisers win those crucial “ready-to-buy” moments with dynamic remarketing and relevant ads. As business data feeds are crucial to dynamic remarketing campaigns, this guide focuses on how to create and optimize your feeds. It covers topics such as:
  • Setting up high-quality business data feeds 
  • Providing complete product data 
  • Keeping your business data feed fresh 
  • Activating dynamic remarketing ads 
Check out these dynamic remarketing best practices to drive more relevant ads and improved performance.

Want to stay on top of even more Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.  

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing crew
1. Source: Google/Nielsen Study: Mobile Path to Purchase: Five Key Findings, November 2013 
2. Source: BI Intelligence Study: Shopping Cart Abandonment Report, March 2015.

Source: Inside AdWords


Reach your most valuable customers with Customer Match

Did you know that you can reach past website visitors and app users? Let's say you’re a travel brand. You can now reach people who have joined your rewards program as they plan their next trip. For example, when these rewards members search for “non-stop flights to new york” on Google.com, you can show relevant ads at the top of their search results on any device right when they’re looking to fly to New York. And when those members are watching their favorite videos on YouTube or catching up on Gmail, you can show ads that inspire them to plan their next trip.

Behind the scenes, this works by adding people to a UserList.

Prior to v201509 there were four different types:

  • BasicUserList: Remarketing to people who took specific actions (such as purchasing shoes) on your website or app.
  • RuleBasedUserList: Remarketing to people who follow advertiser-defined rules. The rule can be as simple as all visitors to your website (which is the easiest way to start remarketing).
  • LogicalUserList: Combining two or more user lists. For example, customers who purchased shoes and/or visited specific pages of your website at specific times.
  • SimilarUserList: Remarketing to people that share similar interests and behaviors with those in other user lists. For example, you can reach new potential customers that share similar interests and behaviors with those who purchased shoes on your website.

A SimilarUserList is automatically created by Google for each UserList based on a variety of factors, such as the number of people on the original list, how recently these people joined the original list, the types of sites that these people browsed and whether the original list is your own. This process may take up to 4 days once the seed list is created.

You can target or exclude user lists at the ad group level, but you can only exclude them at the campaign level.

As a reminder, please have a look at the policy for advertising based on interests and location and the policy for remarketing lists for search ads.

Customer Match

v201509 introduced a new user list type: CrmBasedUserList. It enables you to create a user list using your customers’ email addresses.

Suppose you have an existing database of email addresses of your newsletter subscribers for “people who love shoes”. With a CrmBasedUserList you can reach these subscribers and adjust your bidding accordingly, present different ads, and more. You can use a SimilarUserList of your subscribers list to potentially find new customers who share similar behaviors and interests.

Each CrmBasedUserList must have an optOutLink to provide a link to the page where people can manage their preferences for receiving email messages from the advertiser, including opting out of the advertiser email messages.

Before using this targeting strategy, please take the time to read our policy page.

A CrmBasedUserList can be used for targeting on the Search network, YouTube and Gmail, whereas a SimilarUserList of a CrmBasedUserList can only be used for targeting on YouTube and Gmail.

Keep the following points in mind when using a CrmBasedUserList:

  • Advertisers must collect email addresses as 1st party. For example, an agency can submit email addresses on behalf of an advertiser if the advertiser collected the email addresses directly from its customers.
  • Email addresses can be from Gmail or non Gmail addresses as long as they are associated with a Google account. We recommend adding all available email addresses to maximize the size of the result.
  • Ads will serve only when the user list has at least 1,000 active members. Active members are those who have used Google Search, YouTube, or Gmail at least once over the last 30 days.

If you want to read more about CrmBasedUserList, have a look at our guide and code examples.

As always, feel free to visit us or ask questions on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page.

, AdWords API Team

Share Google Analytics data and remarketing lists more efficiently using manager accounts (MCC)

From monitoring account performance at scale to making cross-account campaign changes, manager accounts help many of the most sophisticated AdWords advertisers get more done in less time. To deliver more insightful reporting and scale your remarketing efforts, we’re introducing two new enhancements to manager accounts: Google Analytics account linking, and remarketing tag and list sharing.

Access your data with a single link

You can now link your Google Analytics or Google Analytics Premium account directly to your AdWords manager account using the new setup wizard in AdWords under Account Settings. This streamlined workflow for linking accounts eliminates the need to link each of your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts individually.
Now when you import your goals, website metrics, remarketing lists, or other data from Google Analytics, you'll only need to do it once. And whenever you add a new AdWords account to your manager account, it will automatically be linked with the same Analytics properties.

These enhancements save time so you can focus on optimizing your campaigns. You can learn more about linking your Google Analytics account into your manager account in the AdWords Help Center.

Scale your remarketing strategy

Many advertisers are seeing tremendous success re-engaging customers and finding new ones using Display remarketing, remarketing lists for search ads, and similar audiences. To help scale these efforts across the AdWords accounts you manage, you now have options for creating and sharing remarketing lists directly in your manager account from the new “Audiences” view, including any lists imported from Google Analytics or Customer Match.

You can also create remarketing lists using a manager-level remarketing tag and use them across your managed accounts. This eliminates the need to retag your website and manage multiple lists in each AdWords account. If any of your managed accounts have their own lists, they can be made available for use in your other managed accounts.

These enhancements make it easier and faster than ever before to get your remarketing strategy up and running. You can learn more about sharing remarketing tags and lists in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Vishal Goenka, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

Source: Inside AdWords