Best practice: Start with your existing labels and naming conventions

While the basic idea of uploading business data and applying it to accounts, campaigns, and other items is conceptually straightforward, you'll want to carefully analyze and plan which data you upload. If the data you upload is too detailed or too complex, you may spend time maintaining business data that doesn't bring much value to reporting and management in Search Ads 360. If the data that you start out with isn't detailed enough, you can always apply additional details as needed.

If you're already using naming conventions and labels to map business data onto your search marketing campaigns, you can stop using labels and use business data instead.

Existing labels

For example, a nationwide advertiser for the Electro brand of cars labels campaigns to identify which model of car each campaign is advertising. A small subset of the advertiser's labeled campaigns may look like this:

To see the total clicks and conversions from all campaigns that are advertising Roadsters, the advertiser can view the Labels report in Search Ads 360.

Use business data instead

To achieve the same effect using business data, the advertiser would take the following steps:

1. Create a business data table that contains car-model names in the ID column:
   Car Model:

   ID
   Roadster
   Sedan
   Truck
   Van

   Tip: You can create a business data table that contains only the default ID column. This is useful if you only need to pivot your reports by a single dimension, but want to make it possible to add more dimensions in the future.
2. Apply the business data to each campaign. To do this, add the “Car Model.ID” column to your Campaigns report. Click in the “Car Model.ID” column for each campaign and choose the relevant model (from the list uploaded previously). Alternatively, you can fill in Car Model.ID through a bulksheet.
    

   When the advertiser is finished, the Campaigns tab would look like this:
   

3. After applying business data, the advertiser can view a summary of reporting data for each car model from the Dimensions tab.
   

Streamlining multiple labels

Advertisers often use many more than just one label to identify campaigns. For example, another advertiser for the Electro brand of cars creates labels to identify each model, trim level, and color of car that they advertise, and then applies the labels to campaigns. A small subset of the advertiser's labels may look like this:

To identify campaigns that advertise different types of cars, the advertiser applies at least 4 labels to each campaign:

Once the labels are applied, you can view reports for each label, but it can be time consuming and error prone to:

• Apply and manage so many labels

• Make sure all of the necessary labels are applied to each campaign

• Make sure all labels are spelled and punctuated consistently

• Make changes to the data, such as split the "Deluxe" trim level into the "Deluxe" and "Ultra" trim levels

Use business data instead

To achieve the same effect using business data, the advertiser would take the following steps:

1. Define a business data table that contains columns for all of the attributes needed to describe car models:
   
   Car Model:

   ID	Brand	Trim	Color

   
    

2. Once the business data table is defined, the advertiser uses bulksheets to upload business data into the table.
   For example:
   Car Model:

   ID	Brand	Name	Trim	Color
   Base Roadster, Green	Electro	Roadster	Base	Green
   Lux Roadster, Red	Electro	Roadster	Deluxe	Red
   Base Sedan, Green	Electro	Sedan	Base	Green

   
    
3. The advertiser applies business data to each campaign by selecting the ID of the relevant car model.

   Notice that when the advertiser selects an ID, the entire row of business data automatically applies to the campaign.

4. Now the advertiser can create reports that pivot on any of the columns from business data table. For example, the advertiser can use the Search Ads 360 Dimensions tab to compare clicks and conversions for each trim level across all car models: