About engine track accounts

Background information: sources of reporting data

For all types of engines, reporting data comes from two separate sources:

• The engine itself is the source for data about impressions, clicks, and cost.
• Conversion tracking systems: Once a customer clicks your ad, other systems such as Floodlight can start tracking activity. To attribute this activity to campaigns in Search Ads 360, clicks need to be redirected to Search Ads 360 using the Search Ads 360 tracking URL (clickserver URL). Each clickserver URL has unique IDs that Search Ads 360 uses to track unique visits to your site and to attribute any conversions during that visit back to the specific campaigns and keywords that led to the visit.

  After Search Ads 360 records the campaign and keyword IDs, it redirects the click to the original landing page you specified for your ad.

What does Search Ads 360 automate for engine track accounts?

For engine track accounts, Search Ads 360 can help automate the following processes:

• Uploading metrics from the engine.
  In engine track accounts, Search Ads 360 doesn't automatically download engine metrics such as clicks, impressions, and cost. But you can download the metrics and upload them into Search Ads 360. Depending on the engine, you may be able to automatically download the metrics on a schedule and then set up software on your computer to automatically upload them to an sFTP endpoint that you create in Search Ads 360.
• Adding the Search Ads 360 clickserver URL to the landing page URLs in engine track accounts. Clickserver URLs enable Search Ads 360 to record visits and attribute Floodlight conversions to your campaigns, keywords, and ads (if the engine supports reporting at the ad level).

  If you sign into any search engine listed above except adMarketplace and Yahoo! and download a bulksheet that contains your campaigns, you can upload the bulksheet into your Search Ads 360 engine track account. Search Ads 360 will automatically add its clickserver URLs to the landing page URLs in your campaigns, and you can upload the campaigns with clickserver URLs back into the engine.

  For adMarketplace, contact the adMarketplace support team and let them know you want to use Search Ads 360 for reporting. They can help you add the Search Ads 360 clickserver URL to your adMarketplace keywords.

  For Yahoo!, contact the Yahoo! support team and let them know you want to use Search Ads 360 for reporting. They can help you add the Search Ads 360 clickserver URL to your Yahoo! keywords.

• Creating campaigns for reporting in Search Ads 360.
  When a customer clicks an ad and is redirected to Search Ads 360, Search Ads 360 creates its own campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad (if the engine supports ad-level reporting) to represent the keyword that was matched and the ad that was clicked. These items Search Ads 360 creates are for reporting purposes only. The ad copy itself doesn't appear in Search Ads 360, nor do any of the normal campaign or ad group settings appear. While you can't create new ad groups, ads, or keywords from Search Ads 360, you can apply labels and business data to enhance reporting. As with other types of engines, the labels and business data are not sent to the engine.

  Any conversions occurring during the visit will be attributed to the keyword that matched the customer search. If the engine supports reporting at the ad level, conversions will also be attributed to the ad that the customer clicked.

  If a customer subsequently clicks an ad from the same campaign and ad group, Search Ads 360 creates an ad and keyword in the existing ad group. Soon after clicks start redirecting through Search Ads 360, the campaign in Search Ads 360 will closely mirror the campaign in the engine itself.

Names may be shortened in Search Ads 360 reports

Supported reporting features

• Standard reporting at the account, campaign, ad group, and keyword level. Metrics at the ad level are only available in Yandex accounts. For the other types of engine track accounts, Search Ads 360 doesn't provide metrics on the Ads tab.
• Executive reports
• Labels and business data
• 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 keywords, dates, business data, and device, but not network or keyword match type. Metrics at the ad level are only available in Yandex accounts. For the other types of engine track accounts, the Ad segment and Ad destination URL dimension are empty.

• Attribution models

• Using the Search Ads 360 Conversion API to upload offline Floodlight conversions

• Conversions and uploaded performance metrics appear as Paid search data in Campaign Manager 360 reports

Search Ads 360 does not support reporting on:

• Sitelinks or other extensions that might be supported by the engine
• Product groups or other similar targets for shopping ads
• Hourly data
• Search Ads 360 macros. That is, Search Ads 360 does not provide values for Search Ads 360 macros in landing page URLs within an engine track account

Search Ads 360 can't create, edit, or pause campaigns, change bids or make other types of changes.

Placeholder keywords in "Other engines" compared to engine track accounts

To report on unsupported engines before Search Ads 360 introduced engine track accounts, you needed to create an engine account of type "Other engines", and then create placeholder keywords in the engine account. While placeholder keywords are still supported, it's recommended that you use an engine track account instead. 

Engine track accounts significantly reduce the time needed to report on unsupported engines because they enable Search Ads 360 to create a campaign that matches the campaign in the engine, instead of requiring you to recreate the campaign and populate it with placeholder keywords. Engine track accounts also enable you to import performance metrics, which is not supported for "Other engines."