Quick talk on AdWords Ad Customizers new functionality

1. Ad Customizers
Ryuichi Hoshi
2015

2. Agenda
● What are Ad Customizers?
● Why Ad Customizers?
● How to use Ad Customizers?
● Limitations / Notes

3. What are Ad
Customizers

4. Ad Customizers are placeholders in your ads which can
be instantiated in real time. Ad Customizers adapt your
ads to the real-time context of your potential customers
such as:
What they're searching for
When they're looking at your ad
What are Ad Customizers?

5. How they differ from Ad Params
Ad Params: Insert up to 2 keyword-level numeric values per
creative.
Ad Customizers is much more powerful
● Flexible: Insert text, not just numbers
● Multi-level: Specify values by Campaign, Ad group, and keyword
● Special rendering: Countdown function enables you to show #
days / hours left until an event
● Detailed reporting: Get stats per instantiation value
Note: Ad Params will be deprecated and replaced by Ad Customizers

6. Why use Ad Customizers
Use Ad Customizers to
Show dynamic info in
ads, e.g., prices,
inventory
Manage ads more
efficiently
Tailor ads to the user Add urgency to your
ads

7. Show dynamic info in ads
Your online site sells violins. You want your ads to show the
most up-to-date price & inventory for each model.
● You don’t want to have to recreate the ad every time the
info changes
● Ad params helps with this, however:
○ It’s a pain to have to update the same value for all
keywords in an Ad group
Use Ad group- (or even Campaign-) level Ad Customizers
instead

8. You sell different models of violins and you want your ad to
highlight the features for each model
If each Ad group promotes a different model...
● Creating a different ad for each Ad group make your
account more complex
● With Ad group-level Ad Customizers
○ Add the same template to each Ad group
○ In real time, instantiate the template with the model
name and features.
Manage ads more efficiently

9. You want to show special offer by season such as “Spring
Sale”, “Summer Sale” and “Winter Sale”
Instead of re-writing your Ads, you can change values with
Ad Customizers without resetting stats.
Tailor ads to the user

10. Your violins are on sale but only for 2 more days.
Encourage the user to act now by telling them that time is
running out.
Use countdown() function and pass it a timestamp to count
down to.
Ad will say “Sale ends in 2 days” or “Sale ends in 5 hours”,
depending on what time it is.
Add urgency to your ads

11. How to use Ad
Customizers

12. Setup steps for Ad Customizers
Set up Feed Set up Ads
Populate
FeedItem
1. Create Feed
with
AdCustomizerF
eedService
1. Create Feed
item
2. Insert details of
ads as FeedItem

13. Create feed as a first step, with data you want to include
in the ad such as Price and Date
customizer_feed = {
:name => ViolinFeed,
:attributes => [
{:type => 'STRING', :name => Model},
{:type => 'STRING', :name => Level},
{:type => 'STRING', :name => 'Price'},
{:type => 'DATE_TIME', :name => 'EndDate'}
]
}
ad_customizer_feed_srv = adwords.service(:AdCustomizerFeedService, API_VERSION)
response = ad_customizer_feed_srv .mutate([
{:operator => 'ADD', :operand => customizer_feed}
])
Note: You can still use Feed services to create a feed for AdCustomizer. But don’t miss to add
CustomerFeed, in that case.
1. Set up Feed

14. 2. Populate Feed Item
Add details of ads into Feed as FeedItem.
feed_item = {
:feed_id => feed_id,
:attribute_values => [
{
:feed_attribute_id => model_id,
:string_value => 'Pro Student 100'
},
{
:feed_attribute_id => level_id,
:string_value => 'beginning'
},
{
:feed_attribute_id => price_id,
:string_value => '$448'
},
{
:feed_attribute_id => end_date_id,
:string_value => '20141220 000000'
}
],

15. 3. Set up Ad
You can put placeholders in your ads which can be
instantiated in real time:
{=ViolinFeed.Model} fetch data from “Model” column in “ViolinFeed” feed.
text_ad = {
:xsi_type => 'TextAd',
:headline => '{=ViolinFeed.Model} Violin',
:description1 => 'Designed for {=ViolinFeed.Level} students.',
:description2 => '{=ViolinFeed.Price} - sales ends in {=COUNTDOWN(ViolinFeed.EndDate)} days',
:url => 'http://www.example.com',
:display_url => 'www.example.com',
}
You can’t write {=123456.Name} where 123456 is FeedId

16. Report
● AD_CUSTOMIZERS_FEED_ITEM_REPORT
provides statistics for feed items used in Ad
Customizers.
● Statistics are aggregated at the feed item level, one
row per feed item.
(See details: Ad Customizers Feed Item report)

17. Limitations / Notes

18. Limitations / Notes
● A standard text ad is required within the same Ad
group
○ This way, we’ll always have an ad to show, even if you forget to
specify a value for the placeholder
● Keep in mind character limits
● Both Ad and FeedItem will need review
● Can’t use more than one feed as a source of data in an
Ad
● 400,000 Feed items per account

19. Resources
● Ad Customizers Guide
● Placeholder Type
● Ad Customizers
● Ad Customizers Feed Item Report