- Starting 30 June 2022, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit ad customisers for expanded text ads as the creation of new expanded text ads will no longer be supported.
- You’ll also no longer be able to upload or edit the business data for expanded text ads.
- Existing ad customisers for expanded text ads will continue to serve until 31 May 2024.
- We strongly encourage you to transition to responsive search ads.
- Learn more about Making it easier to show the right message on search.
Ad customisers allow you to automatically customise the text of your search ads. You can adapt your ad text based on keywords.
This article explains the benefits of ad customisers and how they work.
Benefits
- Tailored messaging: Ads are hyper-specialised to each search or web page being viewed.
- Scalability: Customisers let a single text ad have hundreds of variations, and show the most relevant variation to each potential customer.
- Reporting: The automatic text customisation updates that happen when an ad is triggered don't reset the ad's performance data.
How they work
Ad customisers work like keyword insertion or countdown timers, in which you add dynamic content, directly into your ads. Customisers are available for text ads and responsive search ads. You can customise any part of your ad text, except for the URL. VisURL path customisation is supported for both responsive search ads business data and location customisers, but not for responsive search ads countdown.
To set up a customiser, you’ll first add details for your customiser in your business data. These details can be uploaded from a spreadsheet or added manually.
You’ll then specify the location in your ad text where you want the text to be customised. Add curly brackets '{}' with the name of your customiser into your ad text to indicate which content will be customised.
Learn more about how to create customisers for responsive search ads and text ads.
When to use customisers
When you use customisers, they give people confidence that you have what they're looking for, and an incentive to buy it from you.
- Running a sale: Customisers can display certain discounts with certain products, for sales that change periodically, or that are limited to a specific time period.
- Managing a large inventory: Customisers can use brand-related keywords to display specific details about the product that someone's looking for. For example:
- Keyword targeting can be used to customise keyword insertion.
- Campaign and ad group targeting can be used to quickly update data according to the structure (such as price per product if ad groups are targeted by product).
- Account targeting can be used for updating a global variable, such as current APR rates or ongoing discounts.
Examples
Target by keywordUsing target keywords lets your ad include more details about what potential customers are looking for. This method tends to work well for advertisers with a large inventory whose product details are a strong selling point.
Example
Scott's kitchen supply shop offers hundreds of different stand mixers. He wants his ads to show details for each model, along with the current sale price that he's offering.
Ad customisers let him offer these details for all his mixers, with only one ad. With responsive search ads, first he needs to create the customisers by defining the attributes which can then be used across his account. Then all he needs to do is to upload ad customiser data with the details associated with each mixer. A line from this ad customiser spreadsheet might look like this:
| Keyword | Customiser: Model | Customiser: Capacity | Customiser: Type | Customiser: Start_price | Customiser: Sale_ends |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ProWhip 300 | ProWhip 300 | 5 | tilt-head | £199 GBP | 15/05/2015 20:00:00 |
The 'Keyword' column shows what keyword should trigger the details in the other columns.
When Scott writes his ad, he uses customisers that reference each column in place of specific details. The first part of the customiser ('Mixers') is the name that he gives to his data set, and the second part (for example, 'Model') is the name of a column.
{=Mixers.Model} Stand Mixerexample.com
{=Mixers.Capacity} litre {=Mixers.Type} stand mixer.{=Mixers.Start_price} – sale ends in {=COUNTDOWN(Mixers.Sale_ends)}.
Now, if someone searches for 'buy prowhip 300' on 10 May 2015, and this ad appears, then the customisers update the ad according to the 'prowhip 300' keyword, like this:
ProWhip 300 Stand Mixer
Ad example.com
Five litre tilt-head stand mixer.
£199 – sale ends in five days.
Scott's ad now gives people confidence that he has what they're looking for (a five-litre tilt-head stand mixer), and an incentive (sale price) to buy a mixer from his shop.
Example
Scott's account is organised such that each campaign is focused on one category of appliances (for example, stand mixers, blenders and bread machines), with one ad group per brand. He finds that when people look for a particular model, they often end up buying a different model within the same brand, so he wants to highlight his large selection for specific brands. To do this, he needs to customise his ads by ad group and use the 'Target campaign' and 'Target ad group' columns. Here's an example line from his ad customiser data:
| Campaign | Ad group | Customiser: Brand | Customiser: Num_models | Customiser: Start_price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stand Mixers | ProWhip | ProWhip | 9 | £150 GBP |
He then creates an ad like this for each ad group:
{=Mixers.Brand} Stand Mixersexample.com
{=Mixers.Num_models} models to choose from.Starts as low as
{=Mixers.Start_price}.
Someone searching for 'prowhip 300' might see his ad appear like this:
ProWhip Stand Mixers
Ad example.com
Nine models to choose from.
Starts as low as £150.
