Selecting a category that best describes your conversion goal allows more alignment between category features and data models across Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360, and Display & Video 360. A category is a label that you can apply to your Floodlight activities to group them by the type of action that these activities measure.
On this page
- Benefits
- How categories work
- Updating categories using Structured Data Files and API
- Category filtering
- Categories in reporting
Benefits
- Better organization: It provides a clear, standardized way to group your conversions, making them easier to manage and understand.
- Cross-product consistency: It aligns Campaign Manager 360 and Display & Video 360 with how conversions are managed in Google Ads and Search Ads 360, creating a more unified experience.
- Future-ready measurement: Classifying Floodlight activities can enable more advanced and privacy-safe measurement and modeling features in the future.
How categories work
Selecting a category allows you to view or set a category when saving a Floodlight activity in Campaign Manager 360 and Display & Video 360.
These are the categories that you can choose from for your Floodlight activities:
- Sales
- Purchase
- Add to cart
- Begin checkout
- Subscribe (paid)
- Leads
- Contact
- Submit lead form
- Book appointment
- Sign-up
- Request quote
- Get directions
- Outbound click
- More categories
- Page view
- Qualified lead
- Converted lead
Selecting a category after you enable attribution is a required step when you create or edit Floodlight activities in Campaign Manager 360 or Display & Video 360 .
A column for "Category" will be in the “Floodlight activities” summary and attribution views. This is a required input for activities enabled for attribution. The default category will be disallowed when creating new Floodlight conversion actions categories will be synced across Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360, and Display & Video 360 when a Floodlight activity is created. However, subsequent changes made in one product will not be synced across other products.
How categories work with Search Ads 360
If you share a Floodlight configuration with a Search Ads 360 account, advertising accounts will be in control of their own bidding settings.
- New Floodlight activities: When you create a new Floodlight activity in Campaign Manager 360 or Display & Video 360, its category will be synced to all linked Search Ads 360 advertisers.
- Existing Floodlight activities
- If you edit the category in Search Ads 360, the change will only apply to that specific Search Ads 360 advertiser. It will not sync back to Campaign Manager 360 or Display & Video 360 or other Search Ads 360 advertisers.
- If you edit the category later in Campaign Manager 360 or Display & Video 360, the change will not affect any existing conversion copies in Search Ads 360.
- If a new Search Ads 360 advertiser is linked to the Floodlight configuration after a change was made in Campaign Manager 360, they will receive the most recent category from Campaign Manager 360.
How categories work with Display & Video 360
If you share a Floodlight configuration with Display & Video 360 accounts:
- If you edit the category in Campaign Manager 360, the change will be reflected in Display & Video 360.
- Display & Video 360 is read-only, so the Display & Video 360 user will not be able to change the category of Campaign Manager 360-owned Floodlight activities.
How categories work with third-party activities
For third-party activities such as activities imported from sources like Google Analytics or Firebase, their category will be automatically set based on the event name. For example:
- A
purchaseevent will be assigned the “Purchase” category. - A
first_open appevent will be assigned the “Download” category.
For these key system events, the category is often not editable in order to maintain measurement consistency.
Updating categories using Structured Data Files and API
You can manage categories through Structured Data Files (SDFs) and the API. This is also required for activities enabled for attribution.
When making a bulk edit, a new category field is available and is required when "Attribution enabled" is TRUE. The new field in the Floodlight Activity resource a new category field is available and is required when "Attribution enabled" is TRUE.
Category filtering
Categories can be used as a filter in the Campaign Manager 360 trafficking workflow. This allows you to easily identify activities belonging to specific categories. Learn more about the Trafficking workflow .
You can select multiple categories at the same time when filtering. Categories are also a visible dimension in the “Activities” table.
Categories in reporting
You can add a new dimension that will allow you to run reports on and measure the performance of Floodlight activities that have categories.
You can run these reports in the Standard report type in Campaign Manager 360.
