Did you know? You can use Google Drive to create a product feed in less than 10 minutes and use it to run feed-based campaigns like Dynamic Ads or Smartly.io Automated Ads. Check the video below to get started, and read on for more details!

Creating a spreadsheet

1. Go to https://drive.google.com
2. New > Google Sheets
3. Enter a name for the sheet
   • In our example below, we've named the sheet "Product Catalogue"
4. Add your columns

Here is an example feed that you can use to for trying out feed publishing.

Suggested columns to include:

• id (this is the only mandatory field)
• name
• price
  • sale_price
• image_url
• link_url
• top_seller (yes/no)
• description, color, size, gender, age group...
• category
• availability ("in stock"/"out of stock")
• discount (as a percentage)

Advanced columns:

• targeting values – read more
• budget values – read more
• bid values – read more
• ad status values – read more

ℹ️ Note: Using new line symbols in columns' names may result in incorrect parsing of the feed.

You can freely use any column names that you want, but make them unique. You should avoid using column names that are identical to any available Macro names.

• There should be no empty columns
• There should be no empty rows in the middle
• There should be no duplicate ID values

Fill in your data

Add products in your sheet. Here's what our example looks like:

Publish the spreadsheet as a CSV feed

Time to publish the feed to make it available to Smartly.io! There are two ways to do this:

• Publish the sheet to the web as a CSV file

• Enable link sharing and and get a file export link

⚠️ Caution: When using either of these methods, the contents of your sheet become potentially accessible by third parties, if they have the link URL. If you have confidential or sensitive information in your feed, we recommend hosting the feed on your own servers and using authentication measures to restrict access to the file. See Adding a feed for Automated Ads (CSV, XML, JSON) for information on how to connect such a feed source to Smartly.io.

Publish to the web

Go to File > Publish to the web...

Select Link, the correct Sheet, and Comma-separated values (.csv) as the format. Click Publish.

Double-check these settings:

• Under Published content & settings, make sure that Automatically republish when changes are made is selected
  • This means, when you make changes to the spreadsheet, the changes also go to Smartly and your campaigns
• If you see the option Require viewers to sign in with their account, de-select it.
  • If you are unable to untick this option, you may need to ask your company's Google admin to change this setting.
  • If you do not see this checkbox, everything is OK.
• Note: if you repeat this publishing step later, the format might be reset to Web page. Be sure to select Comma-separated values (.csv) every time.

Done! Now copy the link generated, and paste it into your Smartly.io account as the feed URL.

Export as CSV with link sharing

It is also possible to export a CSV file from your document without publishing it to the web. This can be done by manually manipulating the document URL. Here's what the URL in your browser's address bar usually looks like:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/{KEY}/edit#gid={ID}

The URL needs to be changed to:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/{KEY}/export?format=csv&gid={ID}

In addition to changing the URL, you need to enable link sharing for the document.

1. Click Share in the upper right corner
2. Enable link sharing and set it to Anyone with the link can view
3. Click Done
4. Copy the URL to your Google Sheets document
   • Example: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bqhyVgPwNS-dWxHzqnpOY_7bGSCCSeqjuHvzt1vYOIS/edit#gid=1149095614
5. Paste the URL into any text editor and change the part after the last forward slash / to export?format=csv&gid={ID}
   • Example: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bqhyVgPwNS-dWxHzqnpOY_7bGSCCSeqjuHvzt1vYOIS/export?format=csv&gid=1149095614

The resulting URL can now be used to connect the information in the sheet to Smartly.io.

Test your feed in Smartly

You can test our feed in your own account.

1. Go to your Smartly.io account Settings > Feeds for Automated Ads and click Add a new product feed
2. Add a name to your feed, and paste in this URL:

   https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSmjcPZkjWk3qIeDLnUnOkIP92J4gdw3XnsDcggmv8eOtcbWXwIR5SEPhb1If2tvwMFmRwmsRoojLh5/pub?gid=0&single=true&output=csv

3. Click Advanced mode (left-bottom corner) to continue
4. Select CSV/TSV, add id as your product ID and fill all the other fields as shown in the picture.

Refresh your feed page after few seconds and you should see 9 products.

How to use your Google Drive feed

You can use feeds created with Google Drive to run your Facebook marketing. Let us show you 3 examples:

Use case 1: Meta Dynamic Ads campaigns with Google Drive feeds

If you have the Meta Pixel installed and the pixel is sending the correct events (View Content, Add to Cart, Purchase) and it is also sending the content_ids field, you can run a Dynamic Ads campaign using Google Drive.

Use case 2: Automated Ads to promote your top selling items to prospecting audiences

This few lines here will change the way you do Facebook marketing. In Smartly.io we have a feature called Automated Ads. What Automated Ads does is create ads based on your feed. Now, imagine you have a feed where you have 9 products and you can choose which one to display on a carousel ads based on how well they are selling or if they are still available in your shop.

Let's create an Automated Ads campaign displaying 5 top sellers in a carousel ad.

In the Feed tab, add a new condition, for example topseller = 1. Now Smartly.io will only include the products marked as top sellers from your feed. Narrow down the number of selected products to 5 and create a carousel ad. You can use from 1 to 20 products with Automated Ads.

Now pick any Dynamic Image template previously created, select your audiences, and create the campaign.

The beauty of this? Every time you will add new products to your Google feed and mark them as "topseller", Smartly.io will update your campaign and create new carousel ads, without you doing anything.

Use case 3: Slide Show campaigns

• create a feed that contains only products you want to display in your slideshow
• create an Automated Ads campaign using this feed
• in the Ad Template Tab, select Video, Slide show based on still images, Use dynamic image template

Advanced: randomize your feed's sorting order

Create a second sheet and paste the following in the A1 Cell:

=ArrayFormula(SORT(Sheet1!A2:J51 , RANDBETWEEN( 0+0*SIGN(ROW(Sheet1!A2:J51)), 1.8E+293) , RANDBETWEEN( 0,1) ))

This will take all the content from sheet "Sheet1" and paste it in a random order in Sheet2. Make sure you adapt the range and the sheet name if you changed it.

Then, publish this new sheet "Sheet 2" to the web, like instructed above in this article, and use the new URL generated.