Promote your website with a native site creative. To make a creative, you'll provide a bundle of creative assets including images, copy, and a call to action. The publisher or exchange will arrange and render these assets in a native format appropriate for the page or app they're displayed in.
Example native site creative for the fictitious brand Corner
Assets
Assets checklist
Use this checklist to design your native creative. Optional assets are marked, but it's a good idea to include them so your creatives are compatible with more publisher layouts.
| Logo (required) |
|
|---|---|
| Image (required) |
Large rectangular image to promote the product or service.
|
| Square image |
Square, 1:1 aspect ratio image to promote the product or service. If you upload this image, a second creative is generated.
|
| Advertiser name (required) |
|
|
Headline |
|
| Long headline |
An alternate, longer headline that only appears in some native layouts.
|
| Body text |
Description of the product or service
|
| Long body text |
An alternate, longer description that only appears in some native layouts.
|
| Landing page URL (required) |
The web page to direct people to when they click your ad.
|
| Caption URL (required) |
A shorter, friendlier version of the landing page URL to display in the creative that only appears in some native layouts. For example, “example.com/shop”.
|
| Call to action (required) |
The text on the ad's call-to-action button or link. For example, "Shop now".
|
Serving properties
To report on your native creatives in Campaign Manager 360 or via a third-party measurement provider, click Creative details, then expand the Serving properties section.
| Property | Requirements |
|---|---|
| Campaign Manager 360 tracking ad (optional, CM360-linked advertisers only)
The landing page for the native ad will be derived from the landing page of the tracking placement, if used. |
Choose an active tracking ad in Campaign Manager 360. You should create the tracking ad before you begin setting up your native creative in Display & Video 360. How to set up tracking ads in Campaign Manager 360 Traditional 1x1/click trackers and Campaign Manager 360 event tags are not supported. |
| Impression tracking URL 1 and 2 (optional)
The URL of one or more third-party impression trackers to call when the ad is displayed. |
Up to 1024* characters Standard URLs only. HTML script tags ( <script>), image tags (<img>), and JavaScript files (ending in .js) are not supported. |
| JavaScript tracking URL (optional)
The URL of a JavaScript file provided by a supported verification provider. For example, https://example.com/measurement.js. When you add a JavaScript tracking URL, it will only be included when your creative runs on exchanges that support JavaScript trackers (see the "Features" column in the supported exchanges list). On other exchanges, your creative will still run, but without third-party measurement. |
Up to 1024* characters HTML script tags ( |
* Character limits are for single-byte characters. If using double-byte characters (common in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages), divide by 2.
Minimum assets required to bid
| Combination 1 | Combination 2 |
|---|---|
| Image | Image |
| Headline or Body text | Headline or Body text |
| Logo or Advertiser name | Call to action |
Control creative text length
At least one headline and one block of body text are required. For maximum reach, include short and long versions for both headline and body text. If you need more creative control, you can include only the text lengths you prefer and Display & Video 360 will not bid on native inventory that doesn't include your preferred length of text.
For example, your creative concept may require the long headline (50 characters) to accommodate a long brand name, while you may prefer to use only the short body text (90 characters). Enter these in the "Long headline" and "Body text" boxes. Display & Video 360 will only bid on native inventory that can show both the long headline and the short body text together.
Create a native site creative
Follow these steps to upload a single creative. If you want to create many native site creatives at once, save time with bulk upload.
Step 1: Make a new native site creative
- Open your advertiser.
- Click Creative
Format Gallery in the left menu.
- To show only native formats, click the Native tab at the top.
- Under Native display, click Create. The new creative appears in Ad Canvas, where you'll see 3 empty creative previews, with expandable Assets and Text panels on the right.
Format Gallery in the left menu.Step 2: Add images and copy in Ad Canvas
- In the Assets panel on the right, add images by dragging each file from your computer and dropping it over “Drop file here”. Or click Upload, then select an image file from your computer.
- Add a square logo image.
- Add a rectangular image with an aspect ratio of 1.91:1 (minimum 1200 x 627 px).
- (Optional, but required for Programmatic Guaranteed deals) Add a square image. Display & Video 360 will generate two distinct versions of the creative (rectangle and square), each with their own creative ID and audit status.
- Below the Assets panel, click to expand the Text panel.
- Enter at least one headline and at least one block of body text. The shorter headline and body text are used in more native ad designs, but you can use any combination of lengths you prefer. For maximum reach, include short and long versions of both.
- If the Display & Video 360 advertiser is not linked to a Campaign Manager 360 account (ad server type “Third-party ad servers only”), enter a landing page URL. If the advertiser is linked to a Campaign Manager 360 account, you'll select a Campaign Manager 360 tracking ad or enter a landing page on the Details tab in the following steps.
- Enter a caption URL. This is a shortened, friendly version of your landing page URL shown in the creative to let people know where they'll be taken to when they click your ad.
- Enter a call to action, such as “Shop now”.
Step 3: Name the creative and add tracking
- At the top of the page, click Creative details.
- In the Basic details section, enter a name for the creative in Display & Video 360.
- (Optional) To track the creative outside Display & Video 360, click Serving properties.
Secondary impression trackers are only required if you wish to track your campaign using a third-party verification provider. Do not add Campaign Manager 360 impression trackers from the same Floodlight configuration here, otherwise you will encounter reporting and conversion discrepancies.
- If the Display & Video 360 advertiser is linked to a Campaign Manager 360 account (ad server type "Campaign Manager 360 and third-party ad servers"), you can either add a tracking ad or enter a landing page URL:
- To use a tracking ad, check Add Campaign Manager 360 tracking ad, then search for an existing Campaign Manager 360 tracking ad. To give it time to sync, you should create a tracking ad in Campaign Manager 360 before making your creative in Display & Video 360.
- If you don't want to use a tracking ad, enter a landing page URL.
- After you save the creative, you can't remove a CM tracking ad and set a landing page URL, and vice versa, because it would affect reporting. Instead, make a new creative.
- Enter a JavaScript tracking URL from a supported verification provider (ComScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Moat). Note: Since the exchange or publisher is responsible for serving native creatives, it's not guaranteed that all impressions will serve the measurement URL. For details on publisher and exchange support, see Supported native exchanges.
- If the Display & Video 360 advertiser is linked to a Campaign Manager 360 account (ad server type "Campaign Manager 360 and third-party ad servers"), you can either add a tracking ad or enter a landing page URL:
- (Optional) To add an integration code for an external system or notes about the creative, click Additional details.
- Click Save.
- If you added a square image, Display & Video 360 will generate two distinct versions of the creative (rectangle and square) with their own creative ID and audit status. If you wish to assign unique tracking ads or URLs for each creative, edit the creatives individually after saving.
Display & Video 360 manually and automatically reviews your creatives to make sure they work. Creatives are also checked to make sure they comply with Google's ad policies and the policies of exchanges they can serve on. You can check the status of your creatives in the Creative status tab.
Preview a native site creative
Preview while you create your ad
As you add text and images to your creative, the Ad Canvas preview updates automatically, showing how the different elements in your creative might be rendered. This preview is not an accurate representation of how the creative will display in a live environment, but will give you an idea of how each creative element might look when displayed in an app versus in a website.
If you entered both long and short versions of headlines and body text, only the short versions will be shown in the preview.
See how the creative will look on different publishers
To see samples of how real publishers will style your native assets, open the publisher samples preview. Unlike the initial quick preview, these samples use real native ad styles from publishers. Note that these previews represent a range of potential native ad designs, but do not include every design variation.
Publisher samples are available for native site and native video creatives only.
- Click Preview publisher samples. The Publisher samples page opens in a new window.
- Scroll down the page to view samples from different publishers using your native assets.
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On the Publisher samples page, some samples include an additional preview mode that displays your ad on a sample publisher page. Click Preview
at the bottom of a publisher sample to open this fullscreen preview in a new window.
How to preview on a publisher page
Sample preview on the mobile version of realsimple.com
