Google Ads (Google Adwords)

Google Ads is an online RTB (Real-Time Bidding) based advertisement platform operated by Google. It allows marketers to display their web and app advertisements on multiple platforms such as search, display, Youtube, and other partnered platforms. 

Once the below integration is completed, you may view and track the resulting data of Google Ads 'App Promotion' on the Airbridge dashboard. Moreover, you can enhance your campaign optimization after the integration by utilizing Google Ads conversion actions.

For the WEB campaigns, conversion actions can be easily tracked by appending UTM parameters.

How to Configure App Campaigns 

Create and Register the Google Ads Link ID (Required)

1) Go to Google Ads

2) Click on Tools & Settings on the top right corner and go to Linked accounts under SETUP

3) Find Third-party app analytics and click on DETAILS

4) Click on the button on the top left corner

5) Once you see a pop-up, select Other provider from the drop-down list under App analytics provider. Enter the Airbridge ID 1530462733 under 'Enter your provider's ID'

6) Select Android or iOS for your mobile app's platform

7) Search and select the app you wish to register the link ID

8) Click Create Link ID

Register the Link ID in the Airbridge Dashboard

1) Go to [ Integration > Integrated Ad Channels > Google Ads ] and paste the copied Link ID in the Conversion Integration. Please note that you must create and register the Android and iOS Link IDs respectively. 

- If you operate multiple Google accounts for the same app, you can set up per each account by sharing the link ID from Google Ads.

- If you work with multiple agency partners, advertisers are encouraged to become the owner of all their apps' link IDs and then share with its partners.
(See the Google Ads Guide for details on how to generate and share Google Ads link ID)

- Airbridge only supports one Link ID. Therefore, if you want to manage campaigns for the same app in multiple Google Ads accounts, you need to generate one Link ID and share with multiple accounts as explained above.

Event Mapping Between Google Ads and Airbridge

Airbridge will forward in-app events to Google Ads for campaign optimization and remarketing after you integrate the Google Ads App campaign, regardless of campaign type. 

Listed below are the Airbridge standard and custom events pre-mapped to Google Ads events. 

Airbridge Event	Google Ads Event Type	Google Ads Event
Install (App)	standard	first_open
Open (App)	standard	session_start
Deeplink Open (App)	standard	session_start
Product Catalog (App)	standard	view_item_list
Search Results (App)	standard	view_search_results
Product View (App)	standard	view_item
Add To Cart (App)	standard	add_to_cart
Order Complete (App)	standard	ecommerce_purchase
Sign-up (App)	custom	airbridge.user.signup
Sign-in (App)	custom	airbridge.user.signin
Sign-out (App)	custom	airbridge.user.signout
Home Screen (App)	custom	airbridge.ecommerce.home.viewed
Order Cancel (App)	custom	airbridge.ecommerce.order.canceled
Ad Impression (App)	custom	airbridge.adImpression
Custom Events (App)	custom	{CUSTOM_GOAL_CATEGORY}

Import Events to Conversion Actions

1) Go to Google Ads Dashboard

2) Click on Tools & Settings on the top right corner and go to Conversions under MEASUREMENT

3)  Click on the button on the top left corner.

4) Select App and Third-party app analytics, and then click on CONTINUE. 

5) Select all events you wish to import and click on Import and Continue.

6) Google Ads app campaign integration is now completed and you should be able to find your conversion events in the Conversion actions table. 

If you do not see the imported events, click on the filter icon to change the status to All. 

• You can only import events to conversion actions once the link ID has been registered and the event has been activated. Also, note that it can take up to six hours for a newly added event to appear on the list. If you do not see an event in the list even after registering the link ID, it may be due to the uploading time or absence of activity in the event. 

• Check your conversion tracking status

  • Unverified: conversion actions from Airbridge (conversion tags) have not yet been verified on Google Ads. This may take a few hours to show. 

  • No recent conversions: conversion tracking tag has been verified but it has not recorded any conversions in the last seven days. If you are not running an event or has been over seven days since you ended an event, it will also show 'no recent conversions'. 

  • Recording conversions: Google Ads has seen the conversion tag and it has recorded conversions for the past seven days. 

• Tagging conversion actions must be determined according to your purpose and the final goal of the campaign. 

• You can find out more about the conversion tracking tag here.

View Conversion Actions Performance

💡  Starting from September 15, 2021, Actuals report provides 'Ad Group' by the name you defined in the Google Ads Dashboard. However, you may find ID value only for below cases. 

• Data prior to Sept 15, 2021
• Any subsequent event attributed from target event that was occurred before Sept 15, 2021 

For the data of the Google Ads App campaign, 'Campaign', 'Ad Group' can be provided in the name you defined when setting the Google Ads but 'Creative' can be provided in numerical ID value. But you can match with 'Creative ID' field of Google Ads Dashboard to check its actual name. 

Optimize the Google Ads Campaign with Conversion Actions

Importing Airbridge-tracked events to Google Ads' conversion action will enhance your campaign optimization. 

Setting up 'Bidding' in 'App promotion'

1) Go to Google Ads Dashboard.

2) Click on New Campaign and App promotion.

3) Choose App under campaign type, select your mobile app platform, and click on CONTINUE. 

4) In the setting page, scroll down to 'Bidding' option and select 'Install volume' and 'Users likely to perform an in-app action'. Then choose an action that is most important to you.

 

Or you can select 'In-app actions' and then choose actions that are most important to you.

5) Click 'Save and Continue' to complete the rest of the set-up and launch your campaign. 

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Conversion Tracking for Web Campaign

For Google Ads Web Campaign, you can track your web conversions by appending UTM parameters to the Google Ads Final URL. Airbridge Web SDK will automatically parse the UTM parameters and map them with the Airbridge Campaign Optimization Parameters allowing you to view the attribution results on the Airbridge Dashboard.

* The tracking template feature previously provided by Airbridge is no longer available for conversion tracking due to the newly introduced parallel tracking method by Google Ads. 

To track conversions of the web campaign, please follow the below instruction.

1.  Install the Airbridge WEB SDK on the web page that you want to set in the Final URL.
2. Set the utmParsing: true option when calling the init function on the Airbridge Web SDK. (See Web SDK Guide for more detail)
3. When setting up Google Ads Web Campaign, ensure to append UTM parameters in the Final URL.

Below, you can find the mapping table for Airbridge parameters and UTM parameters. 

* Please note that you must include 'utm_source' parameter into the Final URL, otherwise utmParsing will not properly work even though other UTM parameters are included.  

Airbridge Parameter	‎‎UTM Parameter
channel	utm_source
campaign	utm_campaign
medium, sub_id	utm_medium
content	utm_content
term	utm_term

In addition, if you wish to use 'Value Track' feature of Google Ads, you can track by dynamically importing the value of Google Ads and mapping it to the UTM parameters without directly setting UTM parameters for each Final URL.

However, note that you can easily set up UTM parameters if you use the 'Value Track' feature, but most of the values Google Ads provides are in numerical ID format. This may cause you difficult to analyze attribution data on the Airbridge. Please read on to find out more detail about Value Track.

• Google Ads Value Track guide

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Cost Integration 

Connect your Google ads account to view and measure cost, click, and impression data from Google Ads within the Airbridge dashboard. Currently, only the Owner and In-house marketers can configure the cost integration, and the permitted Agencies can view the data.

Once successfully connected, the below data is available at the campaign and ad group level.

• Metric
  • Impressions (Channel)
  • Clicks (Channel)
  • Cost (Channel)
• Groupby
  • Event Datetime fields
    • Event Date, Event Year, Event Month, Event Week, Event Day of the month, Event Day of the week
  • Campaign Parameters
    • Channel, Campaign, Ad Group, Campaign ID, Ad Group ID, Ad Account ID, Country

⚠️ The cost data for Google Performance Max is available in the Campaign level only.

How to Setup

1. Go to [ Integrated Ad Channels > Google Ads > Cost Integration ] and turn on the toggle. 

2. Connect your Google account that currently running the Google Ads campaigns, and allow Airbridge to access your Google Ads campaigns.

3. When prompted, select the Google ads account you'd like to connect. 

4. After the setup, Airbridge shows the status of cost integration, and the last time Airbridge synced to pull matching cost data.

💡 Tip! When you change settings on the dashboard, the update date and the account information will be displayed respectively. You can also click the arrow icon to quickly jump to the Activity History page filtered by 'Google Ads' to see more details. 

⚠️ Please be noted that the currently linked ad accounts are not displayed in the accessible ad account list.

Stopping Google Cost Integration

• Turning off 'Google Ads Cost Integration' toggle will stop pulling Google ads cost from all linked ad accounts. You may re-activate the toggle without an additional login.
• The previously linked ad account will remain deactivated until it gets deleted.
• Once the toggle is turned off, Airbridge stops getting the cost immediately. Stopping the sync does not have any impact on historical data. 

Deleting the Google account connection

If you wish to delete the linked account, click [Action > icon > Delete] on the right side of the table. 

Adding an additional ad accounts

You can add another Google Ads account for the same app by clicking 'Login with Google' button. The rest of the process is the same as the above.

Note

Cost Data Update Cycle

• Data sync is not real-time supported but syncs every 4 hours. This may cause data discrepancies between Google Ads' dashboard and the Airbridge dashboard. 
• Airbridge pulls the cost data 7 days retroactively including today's date. 

Cost Data Sync Status

• Waiting: New ad account is added and is now waiting for the cost data to be updated. Cost data updates every 4 hours(12AM, 4AM, 8AM, 12PM, 4PM, and 8PM).
• Active: The integration is up and running. The last time Airbridge successfully updated cost data is displayed.
• Error: Cost data can't be updated if one of the following happens.
  • Invalid Credential: Login error. Login info changes such as password change may cause this type of error. To resolve this issue, delete the account and re-register it again.
  • Google Ads API is not responding: In the latest update, Google Ads API is not responding to Airbridge.
• Warning: In the latest update, the API has not returned any cost data matching Airbridge campaign attribution data in the last seven days.
• Expired: Cost data will not be updated if one of the following happens.
  • Google Ads Token is expired
  • The user deletes access to the Airbridge dashboard app within Google Ads.
  • The linked ad account is deactivated

Cost Data in Reports

To view your Google Ads cost data, add the below metrics in the Actuals report.

• Touchpoint
  • Impression (Channel)
  • Clicks (Channel)
• Cost
  • Cost (Channel)
    

💡 'Impressions' and 'Clicks' metrics are touchpoint data collected via Airbridge tracking link, and 'Impressions(Channel)' and 'Clicks(Channel)' metrics are touchpoint data directly received from ad-network(Google Ads).

Note

Please be aware of the below limitations when viewing Google Ads Cost data. 

• Cost Data Discrepancy
  • Google Ads cost data updates every four hours, and indexing takes a couple of days for the cost and campaign parameters which may cause discrepancies compared with the data on the Google Ads dashboard. 
  • Google ads cost data may be changed over time. In other words, for instance, the cost data of Sep 8, 2021, which you viewed on Sep 9, 2021, may differ from when you viewed it on Sep 10, 2021. Airbridge pulls the most recent data.
• Changing Campaign Parameters
  • Airbridge highly recommends you NOT to modify 'Campaign', 'Adgroup', and 'Ad'. 
  • It may cause an issue with the conversion data mapping if you change those names after integrating cost data.
• Currency
  • It is recommended to set the same currency for Google Ads and Airbridge.
  • The Cost (Channel) metric shows the currency you set for Google Ads.
• Available GroupBy for Cost Data
  
  • Cost data is available with Campaign and Adgroup groupby only. Please refer to the below examples.
    • Cost(Channel) data is available with Campaign ID
      
    • Cost(Channel) data is not available with Event Category
      

⚠️ If you'd never saved your ad account name, it will be displayed blank.