Set up Google Ads

With Adjust’s Google Ads integration, you can measure the performance of your marketing efforts for the following Google Ads campaigns.

  • App (ACI, ACE, Pre-registration)
  • Discovery
  • Display
  • Hotel
  • Local
  • Performance Max
  • Search
  • Shopping
  • Smart
  • Video

Before you begin

Here's what you need to know before getting started.

Requirements

Initial setup

To set up Google Ads for your app, follow these steps.

  1. Under Campaign Lab, select Ad partners.
  2. Select New partner.
  3. In the Partner selection screen, choose Google Ads, and select Next.
  4. In the App selection screen, choose your app, and select Next.

Then, set your data sharing options, review your setup, and enable Google Ads for your app.

Data sharing

Share data with Google Ads to optimize your campaigns. In the Data sharing screen, follow these steps.

Enable data sharing for Google Ads

In the Link ID field, enter your Google Ads Link ID. Follow the steps in Google Ads documentation to find your Google Ads Link ID.

Set your data sharing options

Once you enable data sharing, Adjust sends install and session data from all attribution sources, by default. This includes data attributed to Google Ads, data attributed to other networks, and organic data. Additionally, you can choose to share the following data with Google Ads.

  1. Select In-app revenue (from in-app purchases) to send detailed revenue data to Google Ads. You need to map events that generate revenue to share this data.
  2. Select Parameters to share all partner parameters configured in the Adjust SDK for any activity you share with Google Ads. You usually need to map parameters to share this data.
  3. Adjust measures reattributions for Google Ads automatically. Turn on Enable reattribution measurement to send all app sessions to Google Ads. If Google Ads can show a qualifying engagement, it will be awarded a reattribution.
  4. Turn on Use Google Ads attribution window (30 days) to match the attribution window to the one used by Google Ads.
    • By default, the attribution window for all Google Ads regular campaign installs is set to 30 days, and Google Ads pre-registration campaigns are set to 90 days. These defaults will override your app’s attribution window settings.
      Adjust recommends that you match Google Ads' attribution window with your apps to avoid install discrepancies. While not recommended, you can turn this off and customize your desired attribution window.

Map events

Warning:
Mapped events must contain a valid IP address. If Adjust currently records your in-app events via a server-to-server integration, update your request to include an IP address using the parameter ip_address=

All Adjust events are linked to Google Ads automatically. This means that Adjust sends in-app event data, from all sources, to Google Ads. Each event created for the app is mapped automatically to a custom name in Google Ads in the event_{AdjustEventName} format.

To remove any of the automatically mapped events, select (Delete icon) next to the event name. You can also modify the automatically mapped event names. To do this, select (Edit icon) next to the event name, and choose a default name from the list, or enter a custom event name.

If you selected In-app revenue (from in-app purchases) to send detailed revenue data to Google Ads, ensure that you map at least one revenue event to Google Ads. If you had already created revenue events for your app, they are automatically available to Google Ads. Otherwise, create revenue events, and then follow these steps to map your revenue events.

  1. Select Map event.
  2. In the Adjust event list, select the Adjust event that you want to share with Google Ads.
  3. In the Partner event list, select the Google Ads event or enter a custom event name.
  4. Select Apply.

Google Ads events

Map parameters

If the raw data parameters you collect in the SDK differ from the values supported by Google Ads, you can define mappings so that Google Ads can receive that data.

You can view this section only if you have selected Parameters under Set your data sharing options.

To map your parameters, follow these steps.

  1. Select Map parameter.
  2. In the SDK parameter field, enter the name of your Adjust partner parameter as written in the Adjust SDK.
  3. In the Partner parameter field, enter the corresponding Google Ads parameter name.
  4. Select Apply.

After you set this up, Adjust will forward custom event details directly to Google Ads for any of your linked events.

Setup review

  1. In the Setup review screen, review your choices. Make any changes, if required.
  2. Select Enable network to enable Google Ads for your app, and enable data sharing, if set up.
Note:
You don't need to create a link for Google Ads. The links are created automatically after you set up and start a campaign with Google Ads. Adjust then starts attributing users to your campaigns.

Next steps

  1. Go to Google Ads and import linked events from Adjust.
    • In Google Ads, a conversion action is a specific user action that you have defined as valuable to your business, such as an online purchase. To import your Adjust events into Google Ads as conversion actions, follow Google Ads' support documentation. Once imported, Google Ads will begin to send Adjust conversion data for conversion actions.
Warning:
You must import all relevant conversion actions (both first open and any relevant in-app actions) into Google Ads before launching a Google Ads campaign. Adjust cannot report any Google Ads-driven app installs or in-app events until you have completed your import.
  1. (Recommended, but not mandatory) Create Adjust links and use them as the Tracking Template in the following Google Ads web-to-app campaigns. This enables Adjust to attribute users to these campaigns that Google Ads did not claim.
  • Google Ads Search
  • Google Ads Display
  • Google Ads Video
  • Google Ads Performance Max
  • Google Ads Local
  • Google Ads Smart
  • Google Ads Discovery
  • Google Ads Hotel
  • Google Ads Shopping
  1. (Recommended) For S2S event requests, send your current SDK version. Google uses this to fully optimize your in-app event campaigns. To do this, you need the formatted SDK version. The format will be (platform)(SDK version). Here are some examples:
PlatformSDK VersionFormatted SDK Version
iOS4.12.3ios4.12.3
Android4.18.0android4.18.0

Once you've formatted the SDK version, always send it via a custom request header named Client-SDK.

Example:

If the formatted SDK version is ios4.12.3, then the custom header would be defined in the
following curl command:

curl -X GET \\  

'https://s2s.adjust.com/event?s2s=1&event_token=f0ob4r&app_token=4w565xzmb54d&idfa  
=D2CADB5F-410F-4963-AC0C-2A78534BDF1E&created_at=2017-01-02T15%3A04%3A0  
5Z%2B0200&callback_params=%7B%22f0o%22%3A%22bar%22%2C%20%22bar%22%3  
A%22baz%22%7D&partner_params=%7B%22f0o%22%3A%22bar%22%2C%20%22bar%  
22%3A%22baz%22%7D' \  
-H 'Client-Sdk: ios4.12.3'  
  1. (Optional) Customize your attribution settings for Google Ads. After your link is created via the network integration, attribution settings will be available from the network details page.