Once templates are set up and saved, Search Ads 360 evaluates the templates and generates entities. Your feed is evaluated multiple times throughout the day, and the corresponding templates are adjusted. The time needed to make these adjustments depends on the campaign size and number of changes. The Templates table lists the templates created, template type, data sources used, associated accounts, and the evaluation time.
On this page
How are templates evaluated
There are 3 ways that templates are evaluated:
- System evaluation: Templates are automatically evaluated several times a day at the sub-manager level. Search Ads 360 makes adjustments and updates entities managed by the templates based on feed data changes or updates to the templates themselves. Any updates to feeds and templates made during the system evaluation cooling period won't be picked up until the next system evaluation.
- Manual evaluation: Template evaluation can be started by selecting the Evaluate button, which is located at the top of the Template table. Selecting the Evaluate button starts evaluation for all templates in the sub-manager account. For manual evaluations, the cooldown period is one hour, so after the manually initiated evaluation is done, another manual evaluation can't be initiated for one hour. When you select the Evaluate button, the button grays out for one hour and a notification saying “Evaluation request sent” is displayed. Once the evaluation is completed, another notification will display.
- Feed-triggered evaluation: Search Ads 360 automatically triggers a template evaluation whenever you save changes to your feed, including when you add, remove, or edit feed items. This ensures that your templates quickly reflect the most recent data updates.
- To optimize performance, a one-hour grace period applies to feed-triggered evaluations. If you save further changes to your feed within one hour of a previously triggered evaluation, a new evaluation won’t be triggered.
Instructions
To view the time and date of the most recent evaluation, follow the steps below:
- Sign in to your Search Ads 360 account.
- Navigate to a sub-manager account.
- On the page menu to the left, select the Templates drop-down.
- Select Templates.
- Locate the “Evaluation time” column in the Templates reporting table. For each template in the table, the following is displayed:
- The last time the template was evaluated.
- The net-new “Generated entities” that resulted since the last template evaluation.
- Note: The “Generated entities” column shows the total number of entities that are managed by the template. The value is refreshed after each evaluation. If an entity is changed to “unmanaged”, it will be deducted from the generated entity count. If a template is set to “Pause upon creation”, entities will be included in the initial count after their first evaluation, and then be removed in the subsequent evaluation.
- The “Error status”. For information about errors, learn how to Fix Search Ads 360 template output errors.