Set up tracking for a Shopping campaign

There are only a small group of click measurement providers approved to measure specific ad interaction events on Google-hosted properties for Local inventory ads (LIA) and Model Automotive ads. To make sure that your ads don't serve without measurement, the Google Ads team has paused all ad groups making third-party calls to unapproved providers.

Unless you've authorised your account to continue running the impacted ads, previously created ads will be paused to prevent them from serving without measurement.

Learn more about approved click measurement providers for interaction events

We offer restricted data processing for local inventory ads. Google disables callouts to third-party ad trackers for users Google determines are in applicable US states.

For Local inventory, tracking templates will no longer be able to be used on Google hosted local shop fronts via ValueTrack. There will be no third-party tracking for conversions or interactions. Clicks to Final URLs will continue to be trackable by third-party ad trackers.

Learn more about helping retailers comply with US states privacy laws in Google Ads

You can use dynamic tracking URLs to track the traffic coming to your website from Shopping ads. To do this, you'll need to use the ads_redirect attribute in your product data to tell us where to send your traffic. Once you've set up this attribute, a user who clicks on your listing will be taken to the location in the ads_redirect attribute instead of the ones that you set in the link or mobile_link attributes. Learn more about the ads_redirect attribute

You can also use Google Ads tracking templates for your Shopping campaigns to specify additional tracking information. For example, you can add custom parameters or ValueTrack parameters to your tracking templates.

We recommend that you use the {unescapedlpurl} ValueTrack parameter in your tracking template. ValueTrack parameters work with third-party tracking software and Google Analytics to help you fine-tune your campaigns for better performance.

Instructions

Add dynamic tracking templates to your product group

Sign in to your Google Ads account.
On the Campaigns page, click the campaign that you want to edit.
Click Product groups from the page menu.
Click the columns icon .
Expand the Attributes section, and then tick the boxes next to 'Custom parameter' and 'Tracking template'.
Click Apply to save your changes.
If the product group that you want to edit has subdivisions, expand it to see those subdivisions.
For each subdivision in the 'Tracking template' or 'Custom parameter' column, click the pencil icon to add custom parameters and tracking templates

Add dynamic tracking templates to your Shopping campaign

Sign in to your Google Ads account.
On the Campaigns page, click the campaign that you want to edit.
Click Settings on the page menu.
Under Shopping campaign settings, click Additional settings.
Click Campaign URL options and then add tracking template information and custom parameters.
Click Save once you're done.

Examples of product group and campaign tracking templates

Here are some examples of how to use the ValueTrack parameters. In all cases, we'll refer to the 'ads redirect' attribute specified in your product data. However, if there is no 'ads redirect' attribute specified in your product data, we'll refer to the URL from the 'link' attribute.

Using redirects with your tracking templates

If you'd like to work with redirects in your tracking templates, here are some examples of how your product group and campaign tracking templates could be set up.

Example

If your "ads redirect" attribute indicates the following URL:

https://retailer-example.com/electronics-televisions-3.php

and you want your URLs to serve as the following:

https://semtracker-example.com/media/redir.php?prof=12&camp=345&affcode=kw67&cid=890&networkType=search&url[]=https://example.com/electronics-televisions-3.php

then you can set your tracking template as follows:

https://semtracker-example.com/media/redir.php?prof=12&camp=345&affcode=kw67&cid=890&networkType=search&url[]={unescapedlpurl}

Tracking templates can be defined at the account, campaign, ad group and product group level. Learn more about tracking templates

Using custom parameters with your tracking templates

If you'd like to use custom parameters with your tracking templates, learn more about managing tracking and redirects.

Bear in mind

If you add tracking templates on multiple levels, Google Ads will use the most specific one. For example, if you have an ad group and product tracking template, the product group tracking template will be used.

If your tracking templates include ValueTrack parameters that indicate keyword information, like the parameter {keyword}, then those parameters will be blank for Shopping ads. That's because Shopping ads use product groups and not keywords to show your ads.

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