How to Set Up Google Dynamic Display Ads
When creating a new campaign, choose the “Sales” campaign goal objective. As mentioned in the intro of this post, dynamic advertising is only available on the Display Network so choose “Display” as your campaign type. Then for a subtype, the only option allowing dynamic remarketing is “Standard display campaign.”
As for the rest of the process, set your account up as you would set up any other Display Network campaign, but there will be an additional area in Settings you’ll want to find. First, find the “Dynamic ads” section. Next, click on the checkbox asking if you want to “Use dynamic ads feed for personalized ads.” You will then get a selection box with the following options:
Pick whichever business type aligns with your account. If you do not see an option that fits with your account, you can easily choose the “Other” option. Last, if you are already running Shopping campaigns, you will also see the option to sync a feed that you already have linked from the Google Merchant Center. Finish the rest of your ad group set up, then it will be time to work on setting up your feed.
How to create a feed for your dynamic display ads
Feeds are an absolute necessity if you want to run any dynamic remarketing in Google Ads. If you do not have a feed, then you will not be able to create a dynamic ad. Pretty straightforward there. Again, retail accounts running Shopping campaigns will already be a step ahead because most likely you have your product feed(s) created in Merchant Center. For any of the other industries seen in the last image, you will need to use one of the feed templates for your business type. Before I share the business feed templates, there are some limitations we need to be aware of.
Feed limitations
Per Google Ads’ policies, there are limitations to how many and how large your feeds can be. Here are the three feed limit rules currently in place at the time this post was written:
- There can only be 5 million rows or feed items per account. Keep in mind this isn’t just for dynamic remarketing. The feed item total also includes extension and ad customizer feeds.
- There can only be 100 user-generated or business data feeds per ad account.
- Each attribute within your feeds needs to be 3,000 bytes or less. (Google says this is roughly 750-3,000 characters depending on which characters you are using)
Feed templates
Depending on which industry you chose in the campaign set up, you will need to use the proper business type feed template. Each business type feed has different attributes, so yes, the template does matter. Last, if you chose “Other” as your business type, you can create a custom feed to use in your ads. Below you will find the direct download links for each of the Google Ads business types.
- Education
- Flights
- Hotels and rentals
- Jobs
- Local deals
- Real estate
- Retail – Link your product feeds via the Google Merchant Center
- Travel
- Custom template
Uploading your data feeds
Once you are in Google Ads, click on “Tools & Settings.” Then click on the “Business data” link under the Setup column.
Click on the blue, plus (+) button to begin the upload process. You will then need to choose “Dynamic ad feed.” Then select the business type category of the feed you just finished creating.
Choose the .csv file for the feed. Then name your feed. Then you are ready to upload. You will then be taken back to the main Data feeds page. With a simple refresh, you should be able to see your feed in the list.