Google Ads is one of the main pay-per-click advertising platforms online (Every second, there are 2.3 million searches performed on Google, and the majority of search results pages include Google ads.), and setting up your partner tracking links from OffersHub to work with Ads only takes a very few steps.

Setting Up Custom Tracking Domain

We recommend updating your network’s tracking links to use a custom tracking domain before having affiliates/partners start running traffic through Google Ads campaigns. Using a custom tracking domain greatly increases the likelihood of a partner’s tracking link being approved to run in Google Ads.

To additionally improve the likelihood of link approval, consider getting a dedicated IP address for your network traffic. Contact our support team about getting this set up.

Creating Campaign & Ad Group in Google Ads

Once tracking links are set up with a custom tracking domain, you can create a campaign in Google Ads. An ad campaign focuses on one particular subject and can be tied to multiple ads. Provide information like campaign name, keywords, locations, languages, bidding, and budget.

Next, create an ad group in the campaign you just created. Name your ad group. An ad group is the collection of ads that are placed into a particular campaign. You can have one or more ads tied to a single campaign. Create ad groups targeting potential customers for each of your campaigns.

Create an Ad

After setting up an ad group, you can create ads in the group and connect OffersHub tracking to Google Ads. To start, click Ad URL options (advanced) in the Google Ads ad creation form. Then fill out the following fields:

• Headline (Example: “Free credits for every game purchase”)
• Description (Example: “Buy now to save 20%!”)
• Final URL
• Tracking Template

For final URL, use the preview URL from your offer. You can find this in dashboard on an offer’s page.

For tracking template, use a tracking link from OffersHub dashboard. Go to the offer’s page and find the Generate Tracking panel. Select the partner you want to record statistics for, and copy the value in the Tracking Link field.

Enter the OffersHub tracking link as the tracking template in Google Ads, and save your ad in Google Ads once you’re finished.

Tip: To save time on entering tracking templates in Google Ads, you can set tracking templates at the account-, campaign-, and ad group-levels.

Passing Google Ads Data to OffersHub Tracking Links

To pass values from Google Ads into your OffersHub tracking links, we suggest using the source parameter when generating a tracking link. For example, if you want to track keywords being clicked on in Google Ads, set up your tracking link with {keyword}:

https://demo.go2oh.net/click?offer_id=108&aff_id=26&source={keyword}

Similarly, you can pass in the ad placement value with {placement}:

https://demo.go2oh.net/click?offer_id=108&aff_id=26&source={placement}

To view more optional parameters available within Google Ads, check out their documentation.

Parallel Tracking in Google Ads

Google Ads requires parallel tracking when working with measurement providers like OffersHub. Using parallel tracking with OffersHub involves setting up additional methods of click and conversion tracking to handle the process. This is done primarily by also associating sessions in OffersHub with the Google Click Identifier (GCLID).

To use parallel tracking with OffersHub, first take the following steps:

1. Contact our support team or your account manager through Skype and ask to enable the Custom Click ID feature. This allows OffersHub to accept the GCLID as a custom click ID.
2. Set your offer to use the “Server Postback (S2S)” tracking protocol.

Additional steps are required in Google Ads:

1. From the main navigation, go to Settings > Account Settings.
2. In the “Auto-tagging” card, check the box for “Tag the URL that people click through from my ad” to turn on auto-tagging.
3. Click Save.
4. In your Google Ads campaign, find your tracking template (your OffersHub tracking link) and append &ad_id={gclid} to it.

Finally, you need to coordinate these changes with your advertiser:

1. Provide them with your OffersHub conversion link as usual.
2. Verify that your advertiser stores the “gclid” parameter from Google, and returns it via postback to OffersHub in the clickid conversion link parameter.
3. Then for conversion tracking in Google Ads, either:
   • Your advertiser incorporates the AdWords conversion link in addition to the OffersHub conversion link.
   • Or you load conversion data into Google Ads using offline conversion tracking.