How to Create Dynamic Search Ads in XPO

• This feature is only applicable to Search campaigns on Google.
• Ensure that the content of your ad adheres to Google Ads editorial policy  .

Dynamic Search Ad (DSA) lets you reach out to prospects who are searching for a product (or service) offered by you. The ad headlines and landing pages are generated using content from your website, to keep the ads relevant.

DSA focuses on a few sections of your targeted website, without bidding on keywords. Instead, Google will crawl the website, match web pages with the search queries, populate headlines with a relevant copy, and finally link the user to the page. 

DSA DOES NOT use keyword-based targeting for your ads as the headlines and the landing page URLs are generated based on the content of a website. DSA is known to fill in the gaps of keyword-based targeting. However, you can add negative keywords to your DSA (explained in detail below).

About Dynamic Search Ad

Getting Started

• Link your Google AdWords Account to XPO Advertiser Account to run Dynamic Search Ad campaigns.

1. Launch a new DSA Campaign

1. From your Account Dashboard, click +Quick Launch.
2. Follow the set-up below by creating your campaign, ad group, and creative.
3. Select Google Ads and select the Google Ads account you would like to use in the dropdown menu.
4. To access Dynamic Search Ad Settings, you must choose from either of the 3 objectives: Traffic, Lead Generation, or Conversion. 
   
5. Once you select your objective, the Dynamic Search Ad Settings will appear below.
   • Website Domain to Market: Enter your root website address (example.com) or even subdomains (shop.example.com). Based on the content from this website, Google Ads finds individual pages and creates separate ads for them, then matches searches to the ads accordingly.
   • Language: You can select your preferred webpage language from your website based on your ad strategy. Google Ads will find those pages according to customer searches. English will be the default selected language.
     
     

6. These specific pages are used in your DSA, and the landing URLs lets Google understand when to show your ads and where to direct them on your website.

   • Use Google's index of my website: Google automatically crawls your website and pulls out the most relevant feed to show the ad based on the customer's searches. Google index of your website includes pages discovered by Google searches by scanning websites and following different website links. However, this index may not cover all your webpages.
     
     
   • Use URLs from my page feed only: This strategy targets webpages in your custom feed with specific rules that are created from XPO Curator. For instance, a rule that says "All Webpages", will target all URLs in your feed, and a rule that includes the word "book" will use URLs in your feed that includes the word book.
     
     
   • Use URLs from both Google's index of my website and my page feed: This strategy targets both Google's index of your website as well as the custom feed you wish to add to the campaign.

     
     Select Specify Source for Populating the Dynamic Ads:
     You have 3 targeting source options to choose from, and which webpage(s) should be used to target your ad:

7. From the campaign dashboard, click Next once you have scheduled it, keyed in the budget (shared or non-shared), selected the bidding strategy, attribution options, and other campaign details.

2. Create A DSA Ad Group

1. From the Search Type drop-down which includes both Standard and Dynamic, select Dynamic or Standard. Contents of dynamic search ads are automatically generated based on the content of your website, while the contents of a standard search ad is manually entered and created. 
   
2. Targeting Options for your Ad Group

   Targeting Option	Description
   Recommended Categories	For your website, you can select multiple pages that match your targeting theme and goal. These categories are based on the website/domain entered at the campaign level. Google creates a list of targetable landing pages that you can then select and group.
   Webpages	You can either include all webpages from your website by checking the box. This covers all the webpages discovered by Google's search and/or crawlers for targeting. Otherwise, choose specific pages from your website based on category, page content, page title, or URL to target your ads to appear. This is done by creating rules or by using exact URLs where you can add multiple URLs to target.
   	To create rules for targeting on your web pages, your options are: URL (contains): adding certain strings to your URL, for instance, knorex.com/blog Category (equals): You can use this option if you've included page feeds at campaign level to target. Here, you can add custom labels to the URLs and/or exclude certain pages of your feed. Page title (contains): Target pages that contain certain words from the title only. For instance, any particular word from the below image like cross channel, DSP, Advertising, etc. Page Content (contains): Target pages that contain words specified by you. The content can include any words from the entire webpage.
   Audiences and Negative Keywords	You can add negative keywords to your DSA. A type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase. Your ads aren’t shown to anyone who is searching for that phrase. This is also known as a negative match.
   Detailed Targeting	Observation (recommended): XPO will optimize, analyze, and target for you, without narrowing the reach of your ad group. However, you have the option to adjust bids for your selected audiences.  This option is recommended since it does not affect the campaign performance and monitors how your ads are performing based on your selected placements, URLs, titles, and audiences. This option does not narrow your campaign and ad group strategy, instead, let's you observe your strategy. Targeting: You can narrow the reach by selecting specific audiences and also bid differently for each.

3. After you add your ad group bidding strategy and additional settings, click Create.

3. Create an 'Expanded DSA' Creative

1. From the creative dashboard, click Create New Design and your dynamic search ads will automatically generate:
   • The Final URL will dynamically generate the landing pages based on content matching with the Search queries. 
   • Headlines, where Google Ads dynamically generate them from the content on your website with the Search phrases that lead to your ad placement.
     
   • Display Path (please read the below image)
     
     
   • Optional step: Click Add URL Options to add a tracking template to your DSA. When you set up tracking, you can send potential customers to a specific landing page that has extra information in the URL, like the Dynamic ad target that triggered your ad or the type of device the person was using when to click on your DSA.
     When using this option, it is necessary to include the parameter: {lpurl} to be able to link the creatives to the respective DSA ad groups, followed by other tracking modules (UTM parameters).

     For example, if your final URL is example.com and you wish to direct people to example.com/?tracking=123, then the tracking template for your DSA should include the {purl} followed by any ValueTrack parameter separated by ampersands (&). The final tracking template would look something like this: /{lpurl}?&tracking=123. Here, the {lpurl} parameter will be replaced by the dynamic landing page URL.

     Google designs this macro as a part of setting up the tracking for DSA. To learn more visit this link.  

2. You must have at least ONE description, with a maximum of TWO descriptions, for your DSA. Each description shall be limited to 90 characters.
3. Click Publish to live your campaign.

• You can edit, clone, archive, view reports, and view history for Dynamic Search Ad Campaigns and Ad Groups, for the same accounts as well as across multiple accounts.
• You can sync existing Dynamic Search Ad Campaigns and Ad Groups from your Adwords account into XPO.