How Search Ads 360 works

Search Ads 360 models an agency structure

Just as many advertising agencies maintain separate teams to manage search and social marketing for multiple advertisers, in Search Ads 360 you can manage multiple advertisers under a single agency network. 

Each of these advertisers contains its own group of engine accounts and campaigns, as well as its own set of users who can view reports and edit settings.

You can run reports for individual engine accounts, individual advertisers, or even an entire agency network (depending on the permissions that have been granted to your Search Ads 360 user account).

If you are a direct marketer, you'll still have agency with at least one advertiser. You can create multiple advertisers for different product lines or divisions in your organization.

Search Ads 360 exchanges data with search engines

Search Ads 360 has a direct API connection with several search engines. An API is a set of commands that computer systems use to communicate with each other. Search Ads 360 and the search engines use APIs to send a variety of information back and forth over the internet, such as campaign settings, keywords, and ads. Each search engine has its own API with unique behavior, including supported features, how often data is refreshed, and how often Search Ads 360 is permitted to access the API.

Once you connect Search Ads 360 with an engine, you can create and manage search marketing campaigns in Search Ads 360 and have the changes automatically copied to the engines. Likewise, you can make changes directly in the engines and import (sync) them into Search Ads 360. To ensure that you don't forget to sync changes, it's recommended that you schedule syncs to occur automatically on a regular basis.

How Search Ads 360 acquires performance metrics

To track performance metrics for individual ads, keywords, and other items, Search Ads 360 uses its own tracking URL called the clickserver URL. The way an engine interacts with the clickserver URL depends on the engine's support of  parallel tracking.

Acquiring metrics with parallel tracking

Here's how Search Ads 360 acquires performance metrics in engine accounts that use parallel tracking:

1. A consumer searches for a product on a search engine.
2. The search engine displays an ad and reports an impression.
3. The consumer clicks on the ad.
   The search engine reports a click and sends the consumer directly to your landing page.
   At the same time, the engine sends an additional request to the clickserver URL.
4. Search Ads 360 uses the data in the clickserver URL to report a visit and attribute the visit to your ad. 

   Note that engines report Clicks, while Search Ads 360 reports Visits. The number of clicks differ from the number of visits when landing pages are unavailable, perhaps due to incorrect landing page URLs, connectivity problems, or spam filtering.

5. The consumer makes a purchase and lands on the advertiser's confirmation page.
6. The confirmation page contains a Floodlight tag that fires and reports a conversion.
   Search Ads 360 reports a Floodlight conversion.

Acquiring metrics without parallel tracking

In engine accounts that use don't use parallel tracking, Search Ads 360 relies on URL redirection to acquire performance metrics. URL redirection is a standard Web technique that directs a click through one or more services or vendors before landing on a web page. Each service or vendor may add information to the URL, or it may use information in the URL to track activity.

Here's an overview of the URL redirection process Search Ads 360 follows:

1. A consumer searches for a product on a search engine.
2. The search engine displays an ad and reports an impression.
3. The consumer clicks on the ad.
   The search engine reports a click.
4. The consumer is redirected to the Search Ads 360 clickservers.
5. Search Ads 360 records some tracking information and directs the click to the advertiser's landing page. 
   To acknowledge that it successfully directed the click to the landing page, Search Ads 360 reports a visit.

   Note that engines report Clicks, while Search Ads 360 reports Visits. The number of clicks differ from the number of visits when landing pages are unavailable, perhaps due to incorrect landing page URLs, connectivity problems, or spam filtering.

6. The consumer makes a purchase and lands on the advertiser's confirmation page.
7. The confirmation page contains a Floodlight tag that fires and reports a conversion.
   Search Ads 360 reports a Floodlight conversion.

Learn more about parallel tracking.

Search Ads 360 uses Floodlight tags to track conversions

Floodlight is the conversion tracking system for the Google Marketing Platform. Like other conversion tracking systems, the Floodlight system consists of tags that track activity on your site, along with reporting features for adding conversion data to your reports. A DoubleClick cookie enables Floodlight to recognize repeat visits from a specific browser.

Because all properties within the Google Marketing Platform—Campaign Manager 360, Display & Video 360, and Search Ads 360—can use Floodlight, you can use a single set of Floodlight tags to track conversions from both display and search advertising. This prevents cross-channel conversion funnels from counting conversions more than once (for example, conversions that start from a display click and end with a paid search click will give last-click credit to the paid search click).

Tracking parameters for measuring Floodlight conversions

When customers click your ads, two parameters are appended to your landing page URLs: gclid and gclsrc. To measure Floodlight conversions, Search Ads 360 requires these parameters to be passed to a page on your site that contains a Google tag or a conversion linker tag placed by Google Tag Manager. If your site removes these parameters or changes the values before your customer lands on a page that contains one of these tags, Search Ads 360 cannot attribute Floodlight conversions to your ads.

Learn more about using Floodlight to track conversions in Search Ads 360.

Search Ads 360 and other conversion tracking systems

Search Ads 360 can also report conversions recorded by other tracking systems, such as Google Ads conversion tracking and Google Analytics.