Smart Display Campaigns

Smart display campaigns offer a streamlined approach to advertising on the Display Network. Since AdWords automatically manages many aspects of Smart display campaigns, you will only be able to use a subset of settings, bidding strategies and targeting options with these campaigns.

Note: Creation and management of Smart display campaigns is available in the AdWords API on a whitelist-only basis, starting with v201806.

Create a campaign

To create a Smart display campaign, follow the process demonstrated in the Add campaigns code example, but with the following changes:

• Set the advertisingChannelType to DISPLAY.
• Set the advertisingChannelSubType to DISPLAY_SMART_CAMPAIGN.
• Specify a biddingStrategyConfiguration of type TARGET_CPA or TARGET_ROAS.

You can specify the following optional settings as well:

• startDate and endDate
• trackingUrlTemplate and urlCustomParameters
• GeoTargetTypeSetting

The only campaign-level targeting options allowed are:

• Negative ContentLabel criteria.
• Positive Language criteria.
• Positive or negative Location criteria.
• Positive or negative Proximity criteria.

You can also associate your campaign with a dynamic feed, as described in the Dynamic Remarketing guide.

Create an ad group

To create an ad group for your Smart display campaign, follow the same process you use for other ad groups. However, since AdWords manages most aspects of a Smart display campaign, targeting options at the ad group level are not allowed.

Create ads

The new MultiAssetResponsiveDisplayAd is the recommended ad type for Smart display campaigns. Check out the code examples in the corresponding guide for details.

Reporting

Smart display campaigns in reports will appear in reports with AdvertisingChannelSubType of DISPLAY_SMART_CAMPAIGN. In addition, the AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT has a collection of MultiAssetResponsiveDisplayAd... fields. Use these fields to monitor the performance of assets in your ads and determine which ones should be added or removed to meet the goals of the campaign.