In our platform, we are able to surface search term suggestions to advertisers within the search terms stage of the ad wizard based on the products they have selected. This requires a data feed from you as a retailer to tell us which search terms are relevant for which products.
This is a powerful capability for retailers to:
- Steer advertisers to the best keywords for their products
- Suggest keywords that advertisers would not have organically thought of themselves
- Drive-up competition on key search terms through increased keyword visibility
As of CitrusAd's release 36.0, there are now multiple types of suggested search term types to align with the different types of search term placements we support.
Do you have multiple catalogs in your namespace?
This feature is best implemented when all catalogs on your namespace have suggested search term feeds configured.
If only one catalog has suggested search terms configured, campaigns will only serve on the relevant catalog when suggested search terms are selected.
Integration requirements
To activate this capability, CitrusAd needs to know per catalog which search terms are relevant to each product. We need a data feed in TSV format aligning with the below specifications:
| Header | Required | Datatype | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| product_code | Required | Text | This is a unique code to identify the product in the system of the retailer. This field is identical to the gtin and item fields in API and XML file syncing. | F153212AN1 |
| search_term | Required | Text | The suggested search term for a product | spring water |
| search_term_rank | Optional | number | You can use this to rank how relevant the search term is to the product, with 1 being the highest rank | 5 |
| search_term_type | Optional | Text | Defined the type of suggested search term (ORGANIC, CROSS_SELL, SUBSTITUTE). Defaults to ORGANIC if not populated. | ORGANIC |
The file has to adhere to UTF-8 and LF format
We recommend a maximum of 20 suggested search terms per product
This ensures suggestions provided to your brands are the most relevant for each unique product.
An example snippet looks like the below:
| product_code | search_term | search_term_rank | search_term_type |
|---|---|---|---|
| abc123 | cereal | 1 | ORGANIC |
| abc123 | cereals | 2 | ORGANIC |
| abc123 | breakfast | 3 | ORGANIC |
What's cross-sell and substitute search term types?
In our platform, we support three types of search placements: organic, cross-sell, and substitute. Each type of placement has its own unique purpose:
- Organic: integrated to serve relevant ads to a customer's search, such as a cola product on "cola". This is our standard type of search placement and the most common.
- Cross-sell: integrated to serve ads that are complementary to a customer's search, such as a pizza product or banner on "cola".
- Substitute: integrated to serve ads that are similar to a customer's search, such as a different flavour soda product on "cola".
You can synchronise one suggested search term feed per type of placement. When your Technical Account Manager configures your placements, they'll ensure the placement displays the correct type of suggestion.
What if I only want to show suggested search terms for my organic search placement, but not my cross-sell placement?
The activation of suggested search terms is per unique placement. We can show/hide suggested search terms per placement.
What if I have multiple search term types? Are these different feeds?
If you have multiple search term types, you will need to simply combine them into a single file. An example is below for a single product with organic and cross-sell search term types in one file.
| product_code | search_term | search_term_rank | search_term_type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12345 | cookies | 1 | ORGANIC |
| 12345 | cookie | 2 | ORGANIC |
| 12345 | milk | 1 | CROSS_SELL |
Feature activation process
Once you are ready to start synchronising your suggested search term feed, CitrusAd will configure you a GCS bucket to drop your files into.
Your Technical Account Manager will be able to guide you through the activation of this feature. As CitrusAd's platform operations team are required to action a configuration, please be advised there is an additional turnaround time for activation.
Ad serving behaviour
From release 37.0, CitrusAd will only serve products that are relevant to a suggested search term when suggested search terms are added to a campaign.
As part of your suggested search term feed, you already synchronise product and search term combinations; we're just reflecting these combinations when we serve ads to your live site.
Any campaigns that have not been edited since release 36.0 will have been approved with universally relevant search terms selected, so there will be no impact of this change rolling out.
To make this a little clearer, it is broken out in the UI to show which products will display for which search terms:
Custom search term selections will serve any selected product on the campaign, whereas suggested search terms that are selected will only serve the products that have been linked to the search term.