What Every Advertiser Needs to Know About Google Ad Customizers

As an advertiser offering thousands of different products or services, you’re sure to spend a lot of time creating the perfect ads.

Not only do these ads need to show what you offer and how much you’re asking for, but they need to time your promotion accurately. Google Ad Customizers provide an easier and more effective way of reaching your customers with relevant text ads in real-time.

Read on to discover all you need to know about this performance-enhancing tool for your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

What Are Ad Customizers?

Ad Customizers are a Google Ads feature that allows you to adjust PPC ad details in a dynamic way. They are essentially the “placeholders” that help adapt your advertisements to real-time contexts such as:

• What’s your audience looking for in search?
• When are they checking out your ad?
• What device is your audience using?
• Where’s your target audience located?

 
With this feature, you are given the ability to set up a feed, including targeting options for certain ad groups, campaigns, and keywords.

For instance, imagine your company is hosting various conferences around New York City. Using the countdown option in Google Ad Customizers will notify a potential customer in Chicago that they only have a couple of days left to join the conference. At the same time, a potential customer in Florida may receive an “early bird” discount notification for your conference.

There are two types of Ad Customizer:

1. Feed-Based Customized Ad
2. Conditional-Based Customized Ad

Let’s break these types down a bit further while answering important questions surrounding this Google Ads feature.

How Does an Ad Customizer Differ From Ad Params?

First, Ad customizers are a bit different than Ad Params – and are currently a lot more popular.

While Ad Params doesn’t allow you to include words into your parameters, the Ad Customizer enables users to change any product information in real-time.

On top of that, Ad Customizers can include text rather than only numbers and include the countdown feature, unlike Ad Params.

What is Feed-Based Ad Customizer?

A feed-based Ad Customizer (spreadsheet) is created and uploaded into the system based on your specific needs. These feeds can be either standard-based customized or geo-based customized.

For standard-based, the customizer is created despite any constraints surrounding the location. The Geo Ad Customizer helps advertisers disperse their inventory or special offers while offering dynamic updates that include geo-specific information based on the user’s location or interest or current physical location.

For instance, consider the same example of conference in New York. Audience at New York will see the ad as ” Come and grab your passes” and audience in Chicago will see the ad as “Hurry up! only 1 day left”

 

The Downside of Feed-Based Customization

The main issue surrounding customized ads is the fact that your content is being split between a data feed and an ad. Setting up the data feed requires additional steps, along with some knowledge about business data feeds.

The trick is coordinating the ad and feed content so that they fit together. This approach requires the advertiser to use templates that guide the set-up and how much space is available for every element, which limits creative freedom.

There are many interface metrics available for ads, and for feed items, you’ll have little data available with no way to segment it. Not only that, but advertisers don’t receive data based on how a specific ad performed in combination with a chosen data feed row.

Ad optimization, however, is simple. All you need to do is create a new ad, and then the system will begin testing it against other ads.

What are Conditional-Based Customized Ads?

Conditional ads only display if their specific conditions are met.

This approach combines the simplicity of IF functions with the benefits of feed-based customization, and only requires you to show one ad per variation.

In other words, instead of having a single ad and three separate variations from the data feed, all you’ll need to do is create three ads. Again, every one of those ads is only allowed to be shown if a set condition is met.

 

The Power of Conditional Ads

There are three significant benefits of conditional ads:

• Simple to use – no technical expertise required to customize each ad
• No more templates – you can design and customize your ads as you wish
• Reporting, testing, and optimization are all possible – and easy

 

Why Should I Use an Ad Customizer?

This feature allows you to connect with your ideal audience or potential customers with a perfectly customized message at precisely the right time.

Google Ad Customizers save advertisers time spent regularly updating ads. At the same time, they dramatically improve advertisement performance and help to capture customers further down the marketing funnel. When used correctly, this feature will likely boost your performance due to increased CTA, relevancy, and quality score.

These customizers help manage ads with a lot more efficiency through these features:

• Tailored messaging – Hyper-specialized ads for each web page or search result being viewed by users.
• Scalability – These customizers allow a single piece of text to have hundreds of variations while showing the most relevant variation to potential customers.
• Reporting – When an ad is triggered and automatic updates occur, the ad’s performance data isn’t reset.
• Time-sensitive CTAs – Google Ad Customizers countdown function encourages users to take advantage of promotions by notifying them that time is running out.
• Less Account Complexity – A major advantage of customizers is that they limit the need to manage multiple campaigns at once when a slight messaging variation is needed, based on their separate conditions. Using customizers makes customers confident that you have what they’ve been searching for in terms of products or services.
• Remarketing Sales Countdown – These customizers come with a countdown function that allows advertisers to create a sense of urgency within the ad. In doing this, you can nurture intrigue, and play into people’s inherent fear of missing out – aka FOMO.

 
Great thing about ad customizer is that you can target multiple products for your ad by using Target keyword attribute in your feed e.g you have hundreds of products with different models, prices, features, capacity etc.
you can simply mention keyword against each row under Target keyword and your ad will be good to go to dynamically populate whenever search term will match with keywords.

Tweaking each ad for price fluctuations on daily or weekly promotions can quickly turn into a full-time job. However, with Google Ad Customizers, simply make the changes on your spreadsheet and re-upload the changes to Google Ad’s data section.

How Do They Work?

Ad customizers can be added anywhere in your text-based ad besides the final URL field. These ads will only display on the Search Network. They work as parameters that are replaced by dynamic text once a user triggers your ad through a relevant search.

These customizers complete your ad text by using the data you’ve uploaded to your Google Ads spreadsheet. Customizers also allow advertisers to provide default values in a place where your ad customizer doesn’t display or if the text exceeds the set character limit.

How Can I Set-Up an Ad Customizer?

There are three stages involved in setting up your ad customizer. Follow the steps in each to get up and running.

Step 1: Define your Feed

• • Access your Google Ads account. Once there, go to the Navigation bar and select your Tools and Settings

 

 

• • Next, select the Business Data option

 

 

• • Then click on the blue “+” icon

 

 

• • Choose Ad Customizer Data

 

 

• • Download the file, “ad customizer data template.csv”

 

 

• • Include details you would like your customizer to display
  • Replace the sample custom attributes found in columns A to E with your own, then remove extra columns.
  • Ensure all attributes include an attribute type in An Attribute You can view all the attribute formats.
  • Don’t include spaces within the names of your attributes. Standard attributes may come with spaces.
  • For advanced configurations such as device preferences and schedule, make sure you also include standard attributes.

 

 

Step 2: Define Your Targeting

• Your (.csv) customizer data template includes optional targeting attributes from columns F to H. If you want to customize ads for the same keyword across multiple campaigns, you can keep multiple targeting columns. For instance, you can use both “Target campaign” and “Target keyword” columns etc
• For targeting ad groups, you’ll need to include both “Target campaign” and “Target ad group” columns
• Make sure to remove any columns you don’t want to use.
• For keyword targeting, you can choose from two options: You can provide target keyword and provide its match type under same attribute e.g if you want phrase match type for your keyword then under “Target keyword” attribute just write +New York +Conference.
• Second option is, you can write keyword and its match type under separate attributes.
  e.g under “Target keyword text” you can write New York Conference and under second attribute “Target match type” write its match type as phrase etc.

 

Step 3: Enter Your Data and Upload it to Google Ads

You can alter the above template according to your need, in our case let’s recall an example of conferences in New York as mentioned at the beginning of the blog.

Points that should be considered creating a feed.

• • Fill in every row with the information you wish the customizers to show.
  • Replace sample data for with your actual data
  • If you want to add campaign or ad group ensure the targeting columns match the names of your campaign, ad groups, or keywords exactly. When you do this, make sure to include capitalization and spaces.
  • For columns with custom attributes, choose an allowed type.
  • Save your file as .csv, .tsv, .xls, or .xlsx format. Files can be as large as 500 MB for .tsv. and .csv or 50 MB for .xlsx or .xls
  • Accessing the tools icon found in the top right corner, choose Business data found on the right-hand side of your navigation bar.
  • Click onto the blue plus sign and select Ad customizer data
  • Now follow the same steps tools & setting – > Business data – > Blue plus Sign – > Ad Customizer Data
    then click on select file from your computer
  • Give your data set a name.
  • Use short names without spaces.
  • Make sure not to use the same name as an older data set – these won’t work.

 

 

• • Finally, select Apply.

 

 

How to Finally Use feed In Creating Ad?

• 1. 1. Start by creating an ad the same way you would any other.
     2. Type in a curly bracket — this opens up the menu.
     3. From the menu, select the Ad Customizers option.
     4. Choose the feed from which you’d like to get your information.
     5. Choose the feed condition based on what you need.

 

 

 

The Limitations of Ad Customizers

The following are ad customizer’s limitations:

• Advertisers are unable to use more than one feed for their ad’s data sources.
• 5 Million rows or feed items are allowed per account.
• Default ad Character limits for headings & description are applied.
• Feed and Ad items require reviews.
• Ad Customizers cannot be paused. However, you can pause ads that have the customizers or remove associated data.

 

Wrap Up

If you’re managing a big inventory or running a store-wide sale, Google Ad customizers are perfect as they can help you strengthen your campaign to display specific pricing, promotions, and discounts to a targeted audience.

You can leverage data insights with Google Ads customizers to narrow your focus to a specific location, and use a tailored CTA to generate better results on every campaign.

To learn more about making the most out of your Google Ads campaign, brush up on your Essential Best Practices.