Brand Activator requirements – Adthena Help Centre

For Brand Activator to work, your Google Ad campaigns need to meet some specific criteria. Here's what's important:

Google Ads: You must link your Google Ads account to Adthena. This is so we can calculate savings.
Search volume: To avoid influencing search results, we only consider terms with a minimum monthly search volume of 2,000 based on most available data in Google Keyword Planner.
Campaign Type: Search campaigns only.

Additionally, to make sure Brand Activator runs smoothly and to minimize the risk of inaccurate savings or lost conversions, you need to meet all the requirements listed below. If a keyword exists in multiple campaigns, you must check each campaign that contains that keyword.

If your campaigns don't meet the criteria, you have two choices:

Make changes to existing campaign.
Pause keywords in existing campaign and create a new campaign specifically for Brand Activator.

Depending on the change, a reset may be required and if so, it's important all the steps described in Pause or restart Brand Activator are completed, to ensure the feature is completely paused.

Item	Criteria	Impact if not true	BA reset required?
Google Ads	You must link your Google Ads account to Adthena.	We cannot calculate savings.
Search volume	Search terms must have sufficient search volume. Minimum is 2,000 searches per month. Data collection on low volume terms could inflate total search volume. This might skew Google reporting and potentially impact the performance of Google optimization. If low volume terms are added, you will see an error 'Not enough data' in the activity log.	Brand Activator won't work.	You can replace a term and a BA reset won't be required as long as the new term has been in your Google Ads for at least 7 full days.
Campaign Type	Must be Search only. We can only monitor text ads.	Brand Activator won't work.	Reset BA.
Audiences	We cannot use campaigns with audience targeting applied. Observation is fine.	Brand Activator won't work.	Reset BA.
PMax workaround	PMax isn't supported. PMax users must apply the settings described in PMax workaround for Brand Activator for the feature to work.	Brand Activator won't work.
Search term cost data	Each search term should have 7 days of historical data cost data attributed to it. Recommended weekly spend per term is >$100.	We cannot calculate savings.	Reset BA.
Brand Activator campaign	Ensure all Brand Activator terms are in the Brand Activator campaign.	Brand Activator won't work.	Reset BA.
Single location	Each campaign must target a single location, that matches the targeting of your Adthena account.	You may lose conversions. Example... Google Ads: Campaign A targets US and UK. You applied a negative list to campaign A. Adthena: You have 1 US account. Adthena will index US but won't index UK. Hence, the negative list is applied to campaign with UK and US targeting but we index US only. In this example, you stop advertising in the UK as well as the US, even though the keywords might not be Lone Rangers in the UK.	Reset BA.
Device targeting	Brand Activator monitors devices collectively, so your campaign/s should collectively target all devices (mobile, desktop, tablet) i.e. it is ok to have one campaign targeting desktop and another for mobile.	You might make less savings as fewer Lone Rangers will be identified. Example... Google Ads: Campaign A - targets mobile only. You applied a negative list to campaign A. Adthena: Adthena indexes all devices and deem a term as a Lone Ranger if it's a Lone Ranger on ALL devices. If it's a Lone Ranger on mobile but not desktop, then it's not a Lone Ranger. In this example, a keyword won't be added to a negative list since it's not a Lone Ranger on desktop although you care about mobile not desktop.
Negative Keyword List	Ensure there is one list available for Adthena to use for each location. The maximum number of lists allowed in Google Ads is 20, so you may need to remove an existing list. Lists owned by manager accounts do not count towards the limit. This should be a consideration for customers with >20 locations who are managing multiple locations out of a single Google Ads account.	Brand Activator won't work. Adding and removing negative keywords is entirely managed by the script. It's important that no manual changes are made to the list as it may inadvertently skew the data.
Link multiple Google Ads accounts to a single Adthena account	Implement the account specific script from Adthena in each of your Google Ads accounts. A negative keyword list will also be required in both Google Ads accounts.	Brand Activator won't work.
Link a single Google Ads account to multiple Adthena accounts	Implement each of the account specific scripts from Adthena in the your single Google Ads account. You will also require negative keyword list for each of your Adthena accounts. Note that for multiple locations, we can only provide a savings report for the location where the Adthena currency matches the GA managed currency. Savings for the other locations would need to be calculated manually.	Brand Activator won't work.

How to check:

IMPORTANT! If a keyword exists in multiple campaigns, you must complete the following steps for each campaign.

Make a note of each search term and its correlating campaign/s.
Check if the campaign is targeting the location of the Adthena account. You will need to click on the campaign first, followed by clicking on Locations on the left menu.
Check if the campaign is targeting all devices (mobile, desktop, tablet). You can find this section by clicking on Devices on the left menu.
Check that you can see search term costs in your Google Ads account. Go to Insights and reports > Search terms.
Next, you will need to check if any audiences have been applied. Click on Audiences in the left menu bar. Ensure the last 30 days is selected in the date picker. Click on Show table to expand the list. Any ad group with targeting applied cannot be used for Brand Activator. Observation is fine to use.
Check the campaign targets Search (we can only monitor text ads).
Check how many negative keyword lists you have by clicking on TOOLS AND SETTINGS in the top menu and then clicking Negative keyword lists under Shared Library. Note that 'Owned by Manager Account' lists do not count towards the final number.