A Quick Introduction to Ads Data Hub

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Ads Data Hub (ADH) is an environment that can help you navigate through the increasingly privacy-conscious digital world. It enables you to query Campaign Manager, Display Video 360, Google Ads, and Youtube Reserve data, all using the power of BigQuery.  While ADH allows you to run queries on top of any attributes available in the raw tables of the products mentioned, it does not allow direct access to that data and filters out result rows that may enable user identification. However, joining tables on user-id within ADH is possible. And since ADH runs on top of BigQuery, you can enrich the provided datasets with your own data. To better understand the significance of Ads Data Hub, it is important to be aware of the changes happening to Google’s Data Transfer service for Campaign Manager and Display & Video 360. Many agencies and advertisers use the Data Transfer service to get access to raw event-level data that includes UserIDs. With the changes happening in our industry, Google has been making updates to this Data Transfer service. You can see from the note below that all of the UserIDs will be fully redacted by March 31, 2021. After this date, Ads Data Hub will be the only environment with access to this granular level of information.
Google Marketing Platform: We no longer populate encrypted UserID and PartnerID fields in Data Transfer for events associated with EEA users recorded in Campaign Manager and Display & Video 360.  UserID and PartnerID will be redacted for all global events on March 31, 2021.
Source: https://support.google.com/dcm/answer/9006418

Analysis in ADH

You can conduct analysis in ADH by running query jobs in the ADH environment with your BigQuery table as a destination for the results. You can either utilize pre-built queries or write custom queries on top of ADH-provided as well as your own data . Table schemas in ADH are very similar to the ones produced by the data transfer service and can be reviewed directly from ADH’s UI or in more detail in ADH’s documentation . In comparison to running queries in BigQuery, two additional settings are available within ADH:
  • Parameters, which allow running the queries with an argument from the UI or API
  • Row merge configuration, which handles the privacy restricted rows (those with less than 50 users) by either aggregating (sum only) the values of  the omitted rows or assigning them a value (constant)
[sourcecode] SELECT event.city_id, count(*) impressions FROM `adh.cm_dt_impressions` WHERE event.country_code = @country GROUP BY 1 [/sourcecode] Using a country parameter in the query above  

Audiences

You can create and push audiences to DV360 and Google Ads platforms using the Audiences beta feature in ADH. You can also accomplish this  through SQL queries within ADH — with two caveats:
  1. The result of an Audience query should be a list of user ids
  2. Instead of a destination table, your existing or new user list should be configured as a “destination”

Running the Queries (job)

Once you write analysis or audience queries, they can be executed as jobs, which require the following information:
  • Query Type (Analysis or Audience)
  • Query Name (to select the query that was written)
  • Ads data from (selecting an account providing the data)
  • Destination Table (location within your BigQuery where the results will be stored)
  • Start Date
  • End Date
  • Time Zone (to "calibrate" the midnight time of start and end date)
  • Arguments (if parameters were added to the query)
Audience queries will include user list fields in place of the destination table. This gives you the option to update an existing user list or create a new one. You can then track the query execution within the ADH UI.

How Does it Compare?

[ninja_tables id="39348"] * Limited number of User IDs on standard events are still available ** Exception of certain User IDs (COPPA, opt-out, etc.) If you have any questions about using Ads Data Hub, we can help! Contact us to learn more. In the meantime, here are some helpful resources to review: Ads Data Hub - Available data Running Queries in ADH