About Google Ads dynamic search ads in Search Ads 360

Dynamic search ads is a Google Ads feature you can use to automatically show ads when a customer's search is relevant to your site. You tell Google which pages of your site you want to advertise. Then Google uses its search index of your website—instead of keywords—to determine when a customer's search is relevant to your targets.

Instead of spending time researching and harvesting keywords, you can focus on adding useful and appealing ad descriptions along with rich descriptions to the content of your site. 

Works alongside keywords

Within an engine account, dynamic search ads do not compete against exact-match keywords for available ad slots in the Google Ads auction. Any time a keyword in the engine account (from any campaign) exactly matches a search query, Google Ads will place the keyword in the auction and ignore any relevant dynamic ad targets in the engine account. However, when a customer's search term matches a broad match or phrase match keyword, Google uses ad rank to determine whether the keyword or dynamic search ad is included in the auction. Learn more about dynamic search ads and ad rank on the Google Ads Help Center.

You're still in control

With dynamic search ads, you control which pages on your site can be used for dynamic search ads, as well as the ad templates, bids, and budget. As with traditional campaigns, campaigns with dynamic search ads can use negative keywords and negative dynamic ad targets to avoid showing ads on searches that don't convert into sales.

Google Ads campaigns, Search network only

Dynamic search ads are available only in Google Ads campaigns that are targeted to the Search network. They are not available for the following types of campaigns:

• Shopping campaigns
• Manual campaigns that are targeted to the Display network

Learn more about dynamic search ads on the Google Ads Help Center.

Dynamic ad groups for dynamic search ads

Recently, Google Ads created a dynamic ad group especially for dynamic search ads. You can create dynamic ad groups in Search Ads 360 by using the Search Ads 360 user interface or by upload. Learn more about Google Ads dynamic ad groups in Search Ads 360.

Dynamic search ads from Search Ads 360

From Search Ads 360, you can:

• Create dynamic search ads and set up dynamic ad targets (which define the pages on your site to advertise) in dynamic ad groups. You can create dynamic search ads and dynamic targets either from the UI or bulksheets. If you created dynamic search ads and targets in Google Ads, you can sync them into Search Ads 360, but Floodlight tracking of these will not be supported.
• View the customer searches that matched your dynamic ad targets. Then you can add keywords or negative keywords to better match your advertising to customer intent.
• Report on:
  • Engine metrics, such as clicks and impressions.
  • Conversions recorded by Floodlight activities, Google Ads conversion tracking, or Google Analytics.

URLs for dynamic search ads and targets

By default, dynamic search ads and targets inherit the dynamic tracking URL specified in the engine account's URL template, which is {unescapedlpurl} (unless you've edited the template). When Google Ads serves a dynamic search ad, it applies the URL template to a landing page URL for your site.

Instead of inheriting the engine account's URL template,  you can create a template at the campaign or ad group level. Or if you want to specify unique URL parameters for each ad or target, you can create a template at the dynamic search ad or dynamic target level.  

Note that dynamic targets created before mid-August, 2016, specify their own URL template (Search Ads 360 automatically created these target-level URL templates). As a result, these older dynamic targets override any templates you specify higher up by default. If you want these dynamic targets to inherit a URL template from a higher level, you'll need to resume inheritance by removing the URL template Search Ads 360 created.

Expanded and standard ad formats

By default, new dynamic search ads that you create in Search Ads 360 are in the expanded format. If you've already created expanded dynamic search ads in Google Ads, be sure to sync in the change. After the sync completes, you can manage and report on the ads from Search Ads 360.

Dynamic search ads in the standard format will continue to serve, and you can report on them along with expanded dynamic search ads in both Google Ads and Search Ads 360. You can no longer create dynamic search ads in the standard format. Pre-existing dynamic search ads still serve and can be tracked with Floodlight, but going forward Floodlight will only support tracking of expanded dynamic search ads entities. For newly-onboarded accounts, dynamic search ads will still be synced in to your account, but Floodlight tracking will not be supported.

Supported features

• Downloading reports from the Search Ads 360 API.
• Dynamic search ad reporting data is included in executive reports. Note that you can't filter executive reports to include only dynamic search ad or dynamic ad group metrics.
• Attribution models: last click, basic and custom models imported from Campaign Manager 360, and Search Ads 360 data-driven attribution models.
• If you have set up a page feed in Google Ads, you can specify which URLs are used to target your dynamic search ads.
• Apply a conversions, revenue, or position-driven Search Ads 360 bid strategy to dynamic search ads campaigns to use the bid strategy's goal and conversions to adjust the maximum CPC of dynamic targets. 
  Bid strategy changes to the max CPC are logged in change history reports. You can see the changes if you filter the change history report to only display changes to the "webpage" entity made by the bid optimization system.
• Include dynamic search ad campaigns in budget groups to track spend and optionally manage spend using a budget bid strategy.