You can activate your first-party data from InfoSum to Google Ads (Customer Match).

To activate your first-party data from InfoSum to Google Ads (and have the ability to target your audiences across Search, the Shopping tab, Gmail, Youtube and Display) you can use the Customer Match features offered by Google Ads. You can start by creating, in InfoSum, the segment of the users you want to target, send the file with your activation segment to your own S3/GCS bucket or SFTP server, extract the file from there and upload it into Google Ads. Let’s see how in more detail.

Before you begin

Set up your own preferred cloud location

To extract an activation segment from InfoSum to activate using Google Ads you need to set up an S3/GCS bucket or an SFTP server where the file will be pushed to. You can choose the preferred cloud location according to the technology you are using or have at your disposal.

Verify the format of the identifiers uploaded in the activation Bunker

Google Ads requires that the format of the ingestion identifiers meets its requirements. You can verify the format here.

Data activation in InfoSum

Create an activation Bunker

To export your audience segment out of InfoSum you’ll need to have an activation Bunker. If you don’t have one yet, you’ll need to set this up first. See creating a dataset for details.

When you are setting up your activation Bunker, please make sure that you select, as an output column, one of the IDs that Google Ads can currently ingest:

1. Email
2. Phone number
3. Mobile Advertiser ID
4. Other information that must be used all together to define one identifier in Google Ads: First name, last name, country, zip code

Create your activation segment 

Now that you’ve prepared your activation Bunker, it’s time to activate your segment using either Segment Builder or the Query Tool.

• By using Segment Builder you will be able to export a file containing one column. You can use the segment builder if you want to activate one of the following IDs: email, phone number or mobile device ID. 
• By using the Query Tool you will be able to export a file containing more than one column, up to a maximum of five columns. You can use the Query Tool if you want to target your customer based on their location (Postal address).

Using Segment Builder

For more information on how to create a segment, see using Segment Builder.

Once the segment is created select New Activation from the menu on the top right corner. Choose the dataset you want to use for activation and the output column you want to export. 

Set the Output data column label based on the identifier that is being exported from the activation Bunker to easily build the file as required by the Google Ads ingestion process. You must set the new column header based on Google Ads requirements:

• For emails, you must use “Email”
• For phone numbers, you must use “Phone”
• For mobile advertisers IDs, you must use “Mobile Device ID”

Using the Query Tool

For more information on how activation queries work, see activation query.

To write an activation query go to the Console tab of Query Tool. Under the “query text” box you can see the Settings. Check the “Override queried column headers with new headers” option to easily build the CSV file as required by the Google Ads ingestion process. If you want to activate emails, phone numbers or mobile device IDs, follow the same instructions as above. While continue reading if you are targeting your customers based on their location (Postal Address). 

For postal address matching, Google Ads requires the data file must contain 4 columns, one for each of the following information: first name, last name, country and zip code. If any of the required columns are missing, your upload will probably result in an error. Be sure to write the activation query in the right way.

You must set the new columns header based on Google Ads requirements:

• For first name, you must use “First Name”
• For last name, you must use “Last Name”
• For country, you must use “Country”
• For zip code, you must use “Zip”

Connect your S3/GCS bucket or SFTP server to your activation Bunker

Go to the Activation tab under Activate and select the campaign you created for the data activation. At the bottom of the page, you will see a box containing three menu tabs - Details, Export Configuration and Export History. Switch to Export Configuration and use the slider to enable the connector you want to use and fill out the form with the required details. 

See the following links to have more information about how to push data to:

• An S3 bucket with an Access key
• An S3 bucket (ARN role)
• A GCS bucket
• An SFTP server

Click on the Save button, then click on the Activate button to push the data to the final destination selected.

Create the customer list in Google Ads Audience Manager

Once you have created and exported the list of the users you want to target on Google Ads, you must go into your Google Ads Audience Manager account and create the customer list. You can see how here.

Google Ads lets you decide to upload plain text data or hashed data. Google notifies you that it will hash data before sending it to its servers. Select the correct option according to which output column was selected in InfoSum. 

Once you upload the file, you can view the progress of uploading your data under 'Audiences lists'. Google notifies you that this process may take up to 48 hours to complete.

Please note

You can also use the Google Ads API to upload data files and manage their Customer Match segments (Account owners or administrators). To learn more, visit your data section of the Google Ads API on the Google Developers website.

Google Ads requires advertisers are compliant with their Customer Match policy to use the service.