How do I enable Brand Activator?

  • Updated

Step 1: Qualify 

For Brand Activator to work, first check that your Google Ad campaigns meet the feature's requirements. 

Step 2: Link your Google Ads account to Adthena

See Linking your Google Ads account: What are the benefits and how do I link?

Step 3: Google Ads administrator

Get the right person on your team to help you. To implement the scripts in your Google Ads account, you need to have Google Ads administrator privileges.

Step 4: Log into Adthena

The platform interface will look slightly different depending on your subscription.

Whole Market View customers

Log into Adthena and navigate to Brand Activator in the side menu. If you don't see it, please reach out to your Adthena Account Manager about upgrading.

Once the feature has been activated in your account, click on 'Get started!' to begin the setup process and click 'Continue'.

Brand Activator Standalone customers

It will look something like this, depending on which other modules are included in your subscription.

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Step 5: Settings

Search Terms

Important! Before adding or removing terms, please review How do I switch out Brand Activator search terms?

From 'Settings' you can view your existing Brand Activator search terms and make changes. For most customers, our Customer Experience team has already added your search terms to kickstart the indexing process promptly. If you need to make some changes, either add individual terms or bulk upload using a CSV file. For the latter, upload search terms in a single column CSV file (in UTF-8 format). Please only include one search term per row and do not include any headers. For example, you can upload:

  • search engine marketing
  • ppc
  • paid search

but not:

  • paid search, search ads, ppc
  • [sem]
  • +sem
  • 'search engine marketing'
  • "paid search"

As well as brand terms, the following terms are also supported:

  • Generic terms.
  • Broad match and phrase match.
  • Misspellings.

Close variants

Brand Activator uses close variants of every keyword. We show close variants for the 30 last days only. If there are many close variants, we show 100 with the most traffic. You can pause and resume Close Variants at any time. Read more on close variants on Google Ads Help. 

Need more terms?

To expand your limit, please reach out to your Customer team to acquire additional search terms. Note the list is capped at 50 search terms.

Whitelisted domains

Whitelisted domains will not be considered when identifying a Lone Ranger. For example, you may whitelist other domains you own, or your affiliate's domains. If we see both your domain and a whitelisted domain being the only adverts above your or whitelisted domain organic listing, then we will turn off your domain adverts automatically. Because we only pause your domain adverts, not your whitelisted domain(s), Brand Activator may increase traffic to your whitelisted domain(s).

SERP activity

  • a.com = customer
  • b.com = whitelisted

Example 1

  1.  a.com [paid] - Lone Ranger
  2. b.com [paid]
  3. a.com [organic] 

Example 2

  1. a.com [paid] - Lone Ranger
  2. b.com [paid]
  3. b.com [organic]

Low-bid campaigns

You have the option to enhance Brand Activator by running a low-bid campaign alongside it, helping you maintain your paid brand presence while reducing costs. 

This low-bid campaign mirrors your Brand Activator terms but uses significantly lower bids than your main brand campaign. Because it isn’t linked to Brand Activator’s negative keyword list, it continues to serve ads even if your primary campaign is paused—allowing you to stay visible at a lower cost. 

If you choose to implement a low-bid campaign, adding it to Brand Activator reporting ensures accurate savings calculations and helps us monitor your setup effectively.

Learn more about low-bid campaigns and how to set them up here.

Email Alerts

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An email notification will be sent to all subscribed addresses any time a script fails to run. These alerts cover the two most critical failure points:

  • Script ownership has changed (e.g. the person who set it up has left the company).
  • The Google Ads account has reached the 20/20 limit on Negative Keyword Lists.

You can add one or multiple email recipients to ensure the right people are always kept in the loop.

(Note - If the Brand Activator Google Ads script errors or stops, the BA terms remain as they are in the NKL from the moment the script stops.)

Step 6: Setup Brand Activator

Brand Activator smoothly integrates with Google Ads negative keyword lists using two Google App Scripts. Once configured, the scripts automatically adds a search term to the list, preventing ads from displaying for that term; removing it enables ads to resume.

ADVISORY

  • Do not continue with this step until our support team confirms your Google Ads account is linked to Adthena.
  • Authorize the scripts within individual Google Ads accounts, not MCC accounts.
  • Do not manually add individual keywords to the Adthena negative keyword list as this is managed by the scripts. Manual changes may inadvertently skew the savings data because the in-app savings calculation uses 28 trailing days data.
  • For Bing customers - If Google campaigns are mirrored in Bing, Brand Activator can affect them. Since Google Ads campaigns and settings can be auto-imported into Bing Ads, this may impact Bing campaigns unless the auto-import settings are carefully managed. To avoid issues, users should unselect the negative keyword list from the Bing Ads import to keep the two platforms separate and prevent automatic updates.

Instructions:

  1. In Adthena, navigate to Settings and click “Brand Activator Setup” to start the integration process.
  2. Log into the Google Ads account where all your chosen search terms exist.
  3. Click 'Continue' and follow steps 1-10. If you would like help setting up the script, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.
  4. Once the script has been setup, at midnight that same day, an automated script will run to calculate baseline pre-Brand Activator costs in your Google Ads account. Savings will be surfaced after 4 days.

Script setup issues

Unable to authorize script due to ‘App is blocked’ error

Google OAuth clients that request certain sensitive OAuth scopes are subject to verification by Google. If you don't verify each script's project OAuth client, users outside your domain see an unverified app screen when they try to authorize your scripts. An unverified authorization flow allows these users to authorize unverified apps and use them, but only after confirming they understand the risks. The total number of unverified app users is also capped. See OAuth Client Verification for more details.

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Resolution:

    1. Reach out to your Google representative, as they will be able resolve this for you. Once resolved, authorize the scripts and continue setup as per the instructions in-app.
    2. If you don't have a Google representative, your internal Google Workspace Super Admin might be able to help. Once resolved, authorize the scripts and continue setup as per the instructions in-app.
    3. Google also have a dedicated script support team who may be able to help. Email Google Ads Scripts Direct Support <googleadsscripts-support@google.com>. Once resolved, authorize the scripts and continue setup as per the instructions in-app.
    4. Alternatively, your internal IT team may also have the permissions to resolve the issue. Once resolved, authorize the scripts and continue setup as per the instructions in-app.
    5. If all else fails, email Adthena Support team and we will setup a meeting with our engineers and your IT team.