Set up audience extension line items (Alpha)

With audience extension line items, you can monetize your first-party audience segments by allowing advertisers to reach those users on off-property inventory. Off-property refers to inventory from other publishers across Google's network of publishers, outside of your own properties.  

Jump to a section of the article:

• How it works
• Payment and billing
• Enable audience extension campaigns
• Create an audience extension line item and add a creative
• How delivery works
• Find your audience extension line items
• Review audience extension creatives with violations
• Reporting

How it works

Publishers can use audience extension to sell impressions against their audiences, off property. 
Here’s an example with a breakdown of each party’s role:

• Advertiser: This party buys impressions from Publisher 1 for off-property audiences.
• Publisher 1 (audience extension publisher): This publisher creates a campaign targeting the advertiser’s desired inventory (including audience targeting), buying impressions from an off-property publisher (Publisher 2) through the Open Auction.   
• Publisher 2 (downstream off-property publisher): The creatives serve on Publisher 2’s site or app. 

Payment and billing

Ad Manager will bill the audience extension publisher (publisher 1 in the example) for the cost of the media they purchased, plus a percentage fee based on the cost of media. The media cost and fee will be included on the same invoice as traditional ad serving fees, but will appear as a separate line item. The publisher will continue to receive a single invoice from Ad Manager.

• Fees: Rates agreed to in the Advanced features tab will be charged on top of media costs. 

• Total cost: The total cost for the audience extension publisher is dependent on the total number of impressions delivered and the amount Ad Manager bid for those impressions on the publisher’s behalf. 

  However, the maximum the audience extension publisher can be billed for the cost of media is capped by the maximum average eCPM multiplied by the impression goal provided during campaign creation (the implied line item budget). Put another way, if the cost of media exceeds the total calculated line item budget, the audience extension publisher will not be charged for any excess.

  You can review details such as impression quantity, max average eCPM, and max cost in the "Delivery settings" for a line item. 

Enable audience extension campaigns

To start using audience extension line items, you must first enable audience extension campaigns. This step requires the Administrator or Legal manager user role, or the Sign and accept contracts permission. You only need to perform this step once. 

To enable audience extension campaigns:

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Admin, then Advanced features.
3. Under "Feature," locate "Audience extension campaigns."
   You can review associated costs for the feature under "Rate."
4. Under "Status," turn the switch on . 
5. Review and accept the terms. 

Create an audience extension line item and add creatives

Audience extension line items are available for display or video ads. 

Note that in an order, audience extension line items are included in "Total projected value," but not in "Total booked impressions," since the impressions are not guaranteed.

How delivery works

Understanding how pacing and delivery work for audience extension line items can help you accurately monitor your campaign's progress.

Google Ad Manager computes daily delivery goals by dividing the remaining impressions by the remaining days left in the campaign, then adding a buffer of up to 5% to protect against underdelivery. 

Because of this calculation, there's no specific "catch-up" setting for audience extension campaigns. Instead, the daily goal mechanism automatically compensates for any previous underdelivery by spreading the remaining required impressions evenly across the remaining life of the line item.

As a result, if a line item previously underdelivered, the pacing indicator in the Ad Manager UI might still show it as underdelivering, even if it's on track to catch up. The line item will continue to appear behind until the end of the campaign, though the extent of the underdelivery decreases over time as the daily goals adjust.

Find your audience extension line items

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.

2. Click Delivery, and then Line items.
3. On the table, review the "Type" column for line items labeled "Audience extension."
4. To filter the table, click Add new filter, and then:
   1. Select Type, is any of, and Audience extension. 
   2. Click Apply.

Review audience extension creatives with violations

Ad Manager scans creatives that are part of audience extension campaigns against additional policies. Creatives with violations won’t serve off-property, but may serve to your own inventory (on-property). Review any details of the policy violations to help determine what action to take. 

To review the creatives:  

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Delivery and then Creatives.
3. Review the creative with the policy violation alert, and make changes as needed. 

Reporting

You can report on your audience extension campaigns in two ways: directly from the order or via a dedicated Interactive report type. These metrics and dimensions are supported.

To report from an order:

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Delivery and then Orders. 
3. Click the name of an order that contains audience extension line items.
4. Click Run report, then select Off-property report.
   Tip: For orders that include both on-property and off-property line items, an "On-property report" option shows as well. 
5. Review the report results.

To report from Interactive reports

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Reporting, then Interactive reports.
3. Next to "Create my own report," click the menu and select Off-property campaigns.
   
4. Add metrics and dimensions, and make any other selections for your report setup.
   Learn more about creating Interactive reports.  
5. Review the report results.
    

View supported metrics and dimensions

The following metrics and dimensions can be used for reporting on your audience extension campaigns.