If you're engaging audiences through social, search, and display ads, it's possible that all three channels contribute to conversions on your site. But if you use different conversion-tracking systems for different channels, you may be over-reporting the number of conversions. To prevent duplicate conversion counting, add your social accounts to Search Ads 360 and use Floodlight as the single solution for tracking and reporting across social, search, and display channels.
For insight into the complete cross-channel conversion funnel, starting with impressions and clicks and ending with conversions on your site import social performance and engagement metrics into Search Ads 360.
See an example
- A customer clicks a search ad but doesn't immediately convert.
- Later, the customer clicks a social ad and converts.
- If you've added your social accounts to Search Ads 360, the last-click attribution model in Search Ads 360 attributes the conversion to the social ad. You can use other attribution models in Search Ads 360 to distribute credit to both the search and social ads.
If you don't add your social accounts to Search Ads 360, Search Ads 360 may give full credit to the paid search ad while the system you use to track social conversions gives full credit to the social ad. In this case, you're overcounting the number of conversions on your site, and you're missing insight into how your social and search ads work together to drive conversions.
- If you import social performance and engagement metrics, you can compare impressions, clicks, and cost per action (CPA) or ROAS across your search and social campaigns.
Supported social engines
See the list of social engines and features supported by Search Ads 360.
Supported Search Ads 360 reporting features
Search Ads 360 supports the following reporting features for social engines:
- Reporting at the account, campaign, ad group, and ad level from the following tools:
- Standard Search Ads 360 reports
- Executive reports
- Web queries
- Search Ads 360 Reporting API
- Campaign Manager 360 API
- Report Builder in Campaign Manager 360 (Paid social data report)
- Campaign Manager 360's data transfer files (social match table not available)
- Labels, business data, and custom Floodlight metrics and dimensions
- Google Analytics metrics for visits attributed to social ads
- Using formula columns to apply custom logic to the reporting data
- Audience, geographic location of presence, and cross-environment reports
- Segments and dimensions, such as dates, business data, and device, but not network type
- Attribution models
- Using the Search Ads 360 Conversion API to upload offline conversions and attribute them to items or events in social engine accounts
Search Ads 360 does not support:
- Hourly data for social engines
- Search Ads 360 macros. That is, Search Ads 360 does not provide values for Search Ads 360 macros in landing page URLs within a social engine account
Search Ads 360 can't create, edit, or pause campaigns, change bids or make other types of changes. However, some PMDs can send Floodlight conversion data to the social engine, which can then be used for bidding decisions. Contact your PMD for more information.
Cross-channel remarketing
In addition to reporting on social campaigns, Search Ads 360 can work with social and search engines to build lists of customers who click your social ads and search ads. Once the lists contain enough users to satisfy engine requirements, you can use the engines or Display & Video 360 to re-engage your customers on search, social, or display channels. Learn more about cross-channel remarketing in Search Ads 360.
Placeholder keywords in "Other engines" compared to social engines
To report on unsupported engines before Search Ads 360 introduced support for reporting on social engines, you needed to create an engine account of type "Other engine", and then create placeholder keywords in the engine account. While placeholder keywords are still supported, it's recommended that you use a social engine account instead.
With social engine accounts, Search Ads 360 automatically creates a campaign hierarchy that matches the campaign in the engine, instead of requiring you to recreate the hierarchy and populate it with placeholder keywords. Social engine accounts can import performance metrics, and they support cross-channel remarketing, which is not supported for "Other engines."
Campaign Manager 360 clicktrackers compared to Search Ads 360 social engines
Another option some advertisers use to report on social ads is manually applying Campaign Manager 360 clicktracker URLs to social ads. With this option, you can use Campaign Manager 360 Report Builder to run reports and use display metrics and attributes to report on performance.
This Campaign Manager 360 option is incompatible with Search Ads 360 social engines. If you applied Campaign Manager 360 clicktracker URLs to your social ads, remove the clicktrackers before you add Search Ads 360 tracking URLs to your social ads. After you finish setting up your social engines in Search Ads 360, use Paid Social metrics and attributes in your Campaign Manager Report Builder and Attribution reports instead of the display metrics and attributes that you used before.
Next steps
If you haven't already created social engine accounts in Search Ads 360, take a look at the getting started guide.
For more information, learn how to report on social campaigns in Search Ads 360 and in Campaign Manager 360.