Set up remarketing lists for social ads

To tailor the display of social ads to customers who have clicked your search ads, follow this process (see the details below):

1. In Search Ads 360, label search campaigns, ad groups, ads, or keywords that are relevant to your remarketing efforts.

2. In Search Ads 360, create a remarketing list and associate it with the labeled items.

3. In the social engine, set up a remarketing list for your web site visitors and update your site with the remarketing tag the social engine generates. For this list, set up a URL CONTAINS rule that adds customers to the list when they click ads associated with a specific Search Ads 360 remarketing list.

Supported social engines

All supported social engines can work with Search Ads 360 to build a remarketing list from search and social audiences.

Before you start: Make sure your landing page URLs are ready for a new URL parameter

A few hours after you create a cross-channel remarketing list in Search Ads 360, the &ds_rl=URL-parameter will start to appear in the URLs that are sent to your landing pages. Search Ads 360 always precedes this parameter with the & character.

If your landing page URLs don't include other URL parameters--either directly or in a URL template--we recommend adding the ? character to the end of the URLs by doing the following:

• In a search account, specify the following account-level URL template:
  {unescapedlpurl}?
  With this URL template, the landing page URL from the preceding example will be:
  http://example.com?ds_rl=123456
  
  Instead of using a URL template, you can add the ? character directly to the end of your landing page URLs.
   
• In a social account, you'll need to sign into the social engine and add the ? character to the end of all URLs.
  Note that if your landing page URLs already include the ? character, don't add it again. Your URLs need exactly one ? character to work with cross-channel remarketing.

URLs with fragments

If your landing page URLs include a fragment, the ds_rl parameter is added right before the # character. If your landing page URLs don't include URL parameters -- either directly or in a URL template or Final URL Suffix -- add the ? character just before the fragment (fragments should always be added to the last part of the URL). For example:
http://example.com?#page

In a search account, you can use a URL template or Final URL Suffix to do this, but be careful using URL templates with URLs that include fragments, especially in Google Ads accounts. Learn more about using URL templates and URL fragments.

1. Label items in Search Ads 360

1. Create a label to identify the search campaigns, ad groups, ads, or specific keywords that are relevant to your remarketing efforts.

   When customers click the labeled ads, Search Ads 360 adds a URL parameter to the landing page URL. The parameter uniquely identifies the remarketing list, and the engine can use that ID to add customers to a remarketing list maintained by the engine.

   You can use a label in more than one remarketing list, and you can add multiple labels to a remarketing list.

2. Apply the label to search campaigns, ad groups, ads, or keywords.
   You can also label social campaigns, ad groups, or ads if you want to use Search Ads 360 for social-to-social remarketing. Make sure the social ads you want to build the list are visible in Search Ads 360. Search Ads 360 automatically creates social campaigns, ad groups, and ads as reporting metrics become available.

   Labels are hierarchical and cumulative. For example, if you apply a label to a campaign, all of the campaign's ad groups and ads will be included in the list. If you apply another label to a specific ad, the ad will be included in the campaign's label as well as its own label.

2. Create a remarketing list in Search Ads 360

1. In the left navigation panel, click Remarketing.

2. Click + Remarketing list.

3. Name the remarketing list.
   We recommend you use the same name for both the Search Ads 360 remarketing list and the corresponding list you create in the social engine. You may want to prefix the name with SA360 or the engine name to help find and sort your lists. For example, name the list SA360: Safety-conscious cars or Facebook: Safety-conscious cars.

4. Under Create a list of customers from, select one or more of the following audience sources:

   • Search engine: customers who click labeled search ads on any engine account managed by Search Ads 360 will be added to the list.

   • Social engine: customers who click labeled social ads on any social engine account onboarded to Search Ads 360 will be added to the list.

5. From Remarket to customers within, select Social engine.

6. In the Source labels box, select the labels you want to use to build the remarketing list.

7. Click Save.
8. In the reporting table that appears, find the new list and copy the value in the URL parameter column. Search Ads 360 generates this value to uniquely identify the remarketing list. You'll need this value later when you set up a rule in the social engine.
   

After you save the remarketing list, it may be a few hours before Search Ads 360 starts appending &ds_rl=URL-parameter to landing page URLs. Similarly, if you remove the remarketing list, it may be a few hours before Search Ads 360 stops appending the ds_rl parameter.

3. Set up a remarketing list in the social engine

Before you start: On the advertiser's site, make sure you've added remarketing tags generated by the social engine.

Then sign into the engine and do the following:

1. Create a remarketing list to track customers who clicked ads in the Search Ads 360 remarketing list. Consider giving this list the same name as the Search Ads 360 remarketing list.

2. Set up a rule that adds customers to the engine's remarketing list when the landing page URL contains the Search Ads 360 remarketing parameter (named ds_rl) with a value that identifies the corresponding Search Ads 360 remarketing list.

   Use the following syntax for the rule:
   URL contains ds_rl=DS-parameter
   Where DS-parameter is the value of the URL parameter Search Ads 360 generated to match the social engine's list with the Search Ads 360 list.

   For example:

   1. When you created the Search Ads 360 remarketing list, the list's URL parameter column contained something like 1234.

   2. Set up a rule that adds customers to the engine's remarketing list when the landing page URL contains the ds_rl=1234 parameter.

   In some social engines, this may be called a “URL CONTAINS” rule. Refer to the engine's help center for information on how to set this up.

   Note that Search Ads 360 passes a maximum of 3 remarketing URL-parameter values to the landing page URL. If an ad's label is included in more than 3 Search Ads 360 remarketing lists, the engine only sees the first 3 remarketing lists identified by Search Ads 360 and the user will only be added to those 3 lists by the engine.

3. Use the engine's remarketing list to target interested customers.