Brand Activator requirements – Adthena Help Centre

For Brand Activator to work, your Google Ad campaigns must meet the following set of requirements:

Item	Requirement	Impact if not true
Keyword status	Each selected keyword should be active, not paused.	Since a search term is attached to a keyword, brand Activator won't make any savings for the paused search term given that a client doesn't advertise on this keyword.
Search volume	Search Terms must have sufficient search volume. Minimum is 3,000 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.
Search term cost data	Each search term should have 7 days of cost data attributed to it.	Search Term costs are required to calculate savings.
PMax workaround	Currently PMax isn't supported. PMax users must apply the settings described in PMax workaround for Brand Activator for the feature to work.	Brand Activator suppresses negative keywords at campaign level so without following the workaround steps, we can't produce savings.
Brand Activator campaign	Ensure all Brand Activator search terms are in the Brand Activator campaign.	We won't be able to produce the savings for search terms excluded from the Brand Activator campaign.
Campaigns	These should be active campaigns. Once this feature is enabled it's important that the associated campaigns are not paused as it will result in savings report inconsistencies.	Brand Activator won't make any savings for the paused campaign because you don't advertise on keywords within this campaign.
Historical data	Campaigns must be active for a minimum of 7 days to ensure we have sufficient historical data.	There won't be any data in the Savings Report.
Campaign Type	Must be Search only.	Brand Activator won't work. We can only monitor text ads.
Location	Each campaign needs to target 1 single location.	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 scrape US with Brand Activator scraping frequency, but won't scrape UK. Adthena will add terms to a negative list if they are Lone Rangers. Hence, the negative list is applied to campaign with UK and US targeting but we scrape 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.
Device targeting	Collectively, campaign/s should 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. Example... Google Ads: Campaign A - targets mobile. You applied a negative list to campaign A. Adthena: Adthena scrapes 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 and not a Lone Ranger on 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.
Audiences	We cannot use campaigns with audience targeting applied. Observation is fine.	Brand Activator won't work.
Bid adjustments	We advise against selecting campaigns that have bid adjustments set at location or device level because the feature will not work as intended. As a guideline, a 10% bid adjustment would be OK but 50% or more would be an issue. Please be sure to check each keyword for bid adjustments.	You might make less savings. Example... Google Ads: Campaign A, desktop - 90% bid adjustment, indicating you want to show your ad more frequently for searches that occur on desktop. You applied a negative list to campaign A. Adthena: Adthena scrapes all devices with the same frequency and deem a term a Lone Ranger if it's a Lone Ranger on ALL devices. In this example you spend more to appear on desktop. For simplicity let's imagine that you appear 1000 times on desktop and 10 times on mobile on a given hour. We scrape 10 times on desktop and 10 times on mobile during this hour. If we see a competitor on mobile and don't see it on desktop, the term won't be a Lone Ranger, resulting in no savings even though you care and spend more on 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. 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.
Currency	Google Ads account should be managed in local currency.	Not possible to enable in-app Savings Report, as reported savings won't be accurate due to currency conversion issues.

What happens if campaigns don't meet above criteria? There are two options:

Make changes to existing campaign.
Pause keywords in existing campaign and create a new campaign specifically for Brand Activator.
If unsure, please reach out to us for assistance!

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 keyword 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.