About Adobe Analytics data in Search Ads 360

If you use Adobe Analytics to track activity on your site, Adobe Analytics can share some of the data it collects with Search Ads 360. Once Search Ads 360 receives this data, you can do any of the following:

• Use Search Ads 360 reports to see which keywords, dynamic targets, and other biddable items lead to visits, events, and revenue recorded by Adobe Analytics.

• Include Adobe Analytics data in reports pulled from Report Builder in Campaign Manager 360.

• Use Adobe Analytics data in a Search Ads 360 bid strategy that maximizes transaction and action-based conversions.  

• Use the Adobe Analytics data, formula columns, and automated rules to automate your workflow.

How the integration works

1. In Search Ads 360, you turn on the Conversion API and enable the integration with Adobe Analytics.

2. When a consumer clicks an ad and is redirected through Search Ads 360,  Search Ads 360 adds a URL parameter that contains a Google click ID.

3. In your Adobe Analytics report suite, you create a conversion variable (eVar) that collects the Google click ID and associates the ID with an Adobe Analytics visit.

4. In Search Ads 360, you specify which of the report suite's metrics you want to appear in Search Ads 360. 
   Search Ads 360 automatically creates offline Floodlight activities for the metrics you specify. 

5. Periodically, Search Ads 360 automatically downloads reporting data from the Adobe Analytics report suite and stores the data in the Floodlight activities it created.

6. To report on Adobe Analytics metrics from Search Ads 360, you create custom Floodlight columns that contain data from the Floodlight activities Search Ads 360 created.

   You can use the custom Floodlight columns in formula columns, bid strategies, or any other place in Search Ads 360 that supports custom Floodlight columns.

Available Adobe Analytics data

Search Ads 360 supports the following types of default and calculated metrics:

• Counter metrics (metrics that record the number of times an activity occurs or the length of time for an activity):
  • Numeric
  • Decimal
  • Time
    Search Ads 360 reports show time metrics in seconds
  • Counter (standard) events
  • Numeric events
• Revenue metrics (metrics to record the amount of revenue from a transaction):
  • Currency
  • Currency events

Search Ads 360  does not support:

• Adobe Analytics formula columns or percentage columns

• Conversion variables (eVars), except for the eVar that contains the Google click ID

Each Search Ads 360 advertiser can only be linked to one Adobe Analytics organization (company).

Supported Search Ads 360 features

Because Search Ads 360 stores Adobe Analytics data in Floodlight activities, you can use data from Adobe Analytics anywhere you can use Floodlight data.

For example, Adobe Analytics metrics can be attributed to any of the following items in Search Ads 360:

• Keywords
• Dynamic targets
• Text ads
• Shopping ads
• Product groups
• Sitelinks

In addition, you can use the Floodlight activities that contain Adobe Analytics data in bid strategies and apply attribution models to the data.

Important details

Data is collected going forward

When you first add an Adobe Analytics metric to Search Ads 360, Search Ads 360 requests data for one day before you added the metric, and thereafter requests only the new data that Adobe Analytics collects. That is, Search Ads 360 will contain data for a metric starting from one day prior to the day you added the metric to Search Ads 360.

How fresh is the data?

Floodlight activities that contain Adobe Analytics metrics are updated within 8 hours of the data being recorded by Adobe Analytics.

New metrics that you create in a report suite in Adobe Analytics will be available for adding to Search Ads 360 within 24 hours.

Timestamps, time zones, and currencies

Timestamps for Adobe Analytics metrics

Search Ads 360 uses timestamps to attribute visits, events, and other metrics to specific days and hours. However, Adobe Analytics only provides Search Ads 360 with the date, not the specific time that a metric was recorded. To assign a timestamp to an Adobe Analytics metric, Search Ads 360 uses the time of the click reported in the Google click ID eVar along with the date provided by Adobe Analytics to do one of the following:

• If a customer clicks an ad on the same day that Adobe Analytics records a metric,  Search Ads 360 sets the metric's timestamp to a few seconds after the click's timestamp.
• If a customer clicks an ad one or more days before Adobe Analytics records a metric,  Search Ads 360 sets the metric's timestamp to the beginning of the day (12:01 am) that Adobe Analytics reports.
  
  For example, a user clicks a search ad on March 19th, adds items to a shopping cart, but doesn't purchase anything that day. Then on March 21st at 5pm, the user goes back to your site and purchases items in the cart.  Search Ads 360 doesn't see the 5pm timestamp that Adobe Analytics recorded, so your reports in  Search Ads 360 show the purchase as occurring on March 21st at 12:01am.

Time zones

The Google click ID is reported in the engine's time zone. That is, the time at which a customer clicked an ad is reported in the time zone of the engine account that served the ad.

Search Ads 360 reports Adobe Analytics metrics in the Search Ads 360 advertiser's time zone. Sometimes time zone differences can result in a click's timestamp (in the engine's time zone) being earlier than the conversion timestamp in the Search Ads 360 advertiser's time zone. In this case,  Search Ads 360 sets the conversion timestamp to just after the click's timestamp in the Search Ads 360 advertiser's time zone.

Currencies

Search Ads 360 automatically converts revenue metrics to the currency used by the Search Ads 360 advertiser. You can use Search Ads 360 Floodlight instructions to convert values to a different currency. Note that Floodlight instructions apply only to Search Ads 360 reports; they are not used by Campaign Manager 360.

Reporting revenue requires two metrics in Adobe Analytics

Search Ads 360 and Adobe Analytics have different approaches to reporting revenue.

In Search Ads 360, a single Floodlight activity tracks both the number of transactions and the amount of revenue from an event on your site. For example, a Floodlight transaction activity named "Shopping cart" tracks both the number of shopping cart purchases and the total amount of revenue from each purchase.

In Adobe Analytics, you need two separate metrics to track the number of transactions and the amount of revenue from each type of event.

To reconcile these two approaches, you need to create two metrics in Adobe Analytics and add them to a single Floodlight transaction activity.  Learn more about adding Adobe Analytics metrics to Search Ads 360.

Discrepancies between reports in Adobe Analytics and Search Ads 360

You may notice slight differences between the data in Adobe Analytics reports and Search Ads 360 reports. These differences are expected, and are usually caused by the following situations:

• Search Ads 360 only has information about the date that Adobe Analytics recorded a metric, not the specific time that the event occurred. If the time zones for Adobe Analytics and your Search Ads 360 advertiser are different, it’s possible that some metrics will be reported on the following day. Learn more about time zone differences.

• If the Google click ID associated with the conversion is older than 60 days old at the time of upload, the conversion will not be imported into Search Ads 360.

• Any of the following constraints from a user or a user's environment will prevent Search Ads 360 from importing an Adobe Analytics conversion:

  • User has blocked cookies or opted out. This includes all users of the Apple Safari browser, including iOS, who haven't changed the default settings to allow third-party cookies.
  • There is a check-permissions cookie/sentinel
  • There is a COPPA-flagged event
• Conversion paths with multiple interactions may result in Adobe Analytics and Search Ads 360 attributing conversions to different clicks. For example, a customer may click a search ad and land on your site but not convert. Later, a customer may click a different search ad and then convert. If you use last-click attribution in Search Ads 360, the second click will receive credit for the conversion. But depending on how you set up Adobe Analytics to capture Google click IDs, Adobe Analytics may attribute the conversion to the first click.
   
• If Adobe Analytics and your Search Ads 360 advertiser use different currencies, Search Ads 360 converts the revenue to the Search Ads 360 advertiser currency. Learn more about currency differences.