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Google Ads integration

When you connect to Google Ads you will be able to choose Google Ads as a data destination for your Ortto audiences, and update your Google Ads audiences from Ortto.

Google prerequisites

This integration process requires having a Google Ads account.

Use of the journey and playbook actions associated with Google Ads is determined by your Ortto plan.

Connect from Ortto

To connect to Google Ads:

  1. On the Data sources page, click New data source.
  2. Under Advertising or All data sources, select Google, then Get started.
  3. On Connect to Google, select your Data retention period, then click Sign in with Google.
  4. Choose your Google account, then click Allow.
  5. On Configure, select the advertising account you wish to use, then click Sync.
  6. Click Done to exit the setup.

How is the data synced from Ortto?

Once Google Ads is connected, you can select it as a destination for your Ortto audiences. This will send your Ortto audience to be added to your list of Google Ads audiences, as long as Destinations is enabled.

NOTE: Your Google Ads account must have write permissions (not read-only) to be able to select Google Ads as a destination.

To sync your Ortto audiences to Google Ads:

  1. On the Audiences page, click on the audience you wish to sync to Google Ads.
  2. In the left-hand details panel, under Destinations, click Edit.
  3. Select Google Ads, then Save.

Ortto audiences synced to Google Ads will be added as customer list-type audience segments, and will be named with the prefix Ortto:.

In your Google Ads account, you will see the audience listed as Populating until Google Ads has finished processing the audience.

NOTE: If your audience contains less than 100 matched contacts, Google Ads will return a status of Too small to serve. Learn more about Google Ads audience segments in the Google Ads help documentation.

Other reasons for an audience appearing small may be due to Google Ads being unable to match customer data sent from Ortto, or the audience has not finished syncing. Learn more under Troubleshooting Google Ads.

Connecting Google Ads as a data source will not send any Google Ads data to Ortto.

Ongoing data sync

When an audience that you have configured to send to Google Ads is updated (people are added or removed), the updates are synced from Ortto to Google Ads.

In your Google Ads account, when audiences are updated they go back into the Populating state described under How is the data synced from Ortto?

Resynchronizing data

Audience updates are sent to Google Ads:

  • when the data source is reconnected after being disconnected, or
  • if Destinations is re-enabled after being disabled.

What does the data source add to my account?

Connecting Google Ads as a data source adds:

Example use of Google activity merge tag in an email message

Learn more about using Google Ads in Ortto under Using Google Ads.

Access the Google Ads data source view

When a data source is connected, you are provided with a data source view. On the Data sources page, click the data source you wish to view.

A data source’s view is the administration page where you can:

  • give the data source a new name (this will not affect your Google Ads account settings). To do so, hover over the name and click the pencil icon, then type the new name and click on a blank area of the page to save the name.
  • disconnect the data source. To do so, click Actions  Disconnect.
  • configure the data retention period for activity data.

Learn more about the data source view under Managing data sources.

Using Google Ads

The Google Ads actions that are added to your account enable you to add and remove people from your Google Ads audiences in journeys and playbooks by:

  • using an Action shape in a journey, or
  • adding an Action in a playbook.

One way to use the Google Ads integration is to target customers at different stages of the buying cycle using a playbook or journey.

For customers who are within a trial onboarding cycle, you could use an activity such as Chargebee’s New trial has occurred in the last 3 days as a journey entry criteria. Within that journey, you can add an Action shape to add that person to a Google Ads audience segment named Trial customers. You can then use Google Ads Customer Match to serve tips and guides on using your product to those customers.

For customers who have recently made a purchase, you could use an activity such as Shopify’s Placed order occurs as a playbook entry criteria to send the customer an order confirmation or thank you email. Within that playbook, you can add an Action to remove that person from your Google Ads audience segment targeting new customers.

TIP: Using an occurs condition in your campaign entry criteria gives you a fresh data set, as people enter the journey/playbook when they perform the specified activity (as opposed to using has occurred, which qualifies people who have already performed an activity).

Another way to use the Google Ads integration is to generate leads natively from a Google ad and have the lead data sent directly to your Ortto account. For example, you could generate leads for a sales demo directly from an ad with Google lead form extensions enabled. When leads view the ad, they can fill in your sales demo form directly from your ad. The form submissions are captured in Ortto as the Google lead ad submitted activity.

On the People page, you can view a segment of people who submitted a Google Ads lead form, and filter by form attributes such as job title or response. Depending on the filter conditions you set, you can use the segment to create an audience, send a campaign, tag matches, export, or archive.

The conversion destinations feature enables you to send system, data source (such as Shopify) and custom activity events to your Google Ads account. Once you have enabled conversion destinations for a particular activity, events associated with the activity can be sent as conversion data to Google Ads.

Learn more about conversion destinations in Managing activities.

Troubleshooting Google Ads

This troubleshooting guide is designed to help you with common questions or issues you may encounter when using Google Ads as a data source.

For further assistance, please contact our Support team:

  1. In the left-hand navigation drawer of your Ortto account, click Support.
  2. On the How can we help? page:
    1. Under Quick links, click Chat with support.
    2. Type your message in the Talk messenger widget to start a conversation with our team.

Disconnect and delete the data source

You must disconnect and archive a data source before you can delete it.

Disconnecting a data source from Ortto will stop new data from the data source merging with the CDP.

Learn about disconnecting, archiving and deleting a data source under Managing data sources.

Data source already connected

Disconnect, archive, and delete the existing Google Ads connection before attempting to connect again; the existing data source must be deleted.

Connect more than one Google Ads account

Ortto can connect to only one Google Ads account at a time. To connect to another Google Ads account, you must first disconnect and delete the data source for the current Google Ads account.

If you have audiences configured with Google Ads as a data destination, you may see the data source as "Syncing" if you have a large amount of audience activity (people entering/leaving the audience).

Learn more about data source statuses under Managing data sources.

Ortto audiences are missing from Google Ads account

Ensure you have enabled Google Ads under Destinations in the Audience you wish to sync to Google Ads. Follow the steps outlined under How is the data synced from Ortto?.

Removing Ortto audiences from Google Ads account

To stop syncing updates for a particular audience from Ortto to Google Ads, deselect Google Ads as a destination for that audience.

Deselecting Google Ads as a destination for your audience after it has been synced from Ortto to Google Ads will not remove the audience from your Google Ads account. You need to edit/delete the audience in Google Ads.

The number of contacts in my Google Ads audience segment doesn't match my Ortto audience

When you have enabled audience data to be sent to Google Ads as a destination, the audience data is populated in Google ads as an audience segment.

Sometimes, the number of contacts in your Ortto audience will be larger than the number of contacts in the Google Ads audience. This could be for one of two reasons:

  • Difficulty matching Ortto contacts with Google Ads contacts. When Ortto sends the data to Google, Google will try to match the data received with their existing customer data. In Google Ads, you can see this at the audience's Match rate.
    Customer matching is done using a unique identifier, such as an email address. This may make matching Ortto and Google data tricky if, for example, a customer has a different email address in Ortto to the one they have in Google Ads (e.g. they are known by their work email address in Ortto, but are known by their personal email address in Google Ads).
    Google may also remove duplicate customer records, which can contribute to audience numbers differing.
  • Audience data has not finished syncing. Audience data can take 24 hours or more to sync from Ortto to Google Ads. If, in Google Ads, the audience is marked as "Populating", this means the sync is not complete.