Preventing Campaign Overlap

Preventing overlap between Symbiosys and retailer-managed Google campaigns

Products running in Symbiosys campaigns may also be eligible to serve in retailer-managed Google campaigns; however, when the same SKU is active in multiple campaigns, they can overlap and compete against each other. To prevent this, Symbiosys identifies products that are currently active in Symbiosys campaigns and makes them available for exclusion from retailer-managed campaigns in Google Ads.

How Symbiosys identifies active products

Symbiosys creates and maintains a supplemental feed in your Google Merchant Center (GMC) that populates an unused custom_label field (e.g. custom_label_0 or custom_label_4) with the value of symbiosys_active.

Reference: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6275295  

This value is applied only to SKUs that are currently active in Symbiosys campaigns. The label is updated hourly while campaigns are active, so product eligibility reflects live campaign activity. When a Symbiosys campaign ends, the label is removed and the SKU becomes eligible again for retailer-managed campaigns.

How the exclusion works in Google Ads

The retailer creates a product group using this custom label value (e.g. custom_label_0 = symbiosys_active), that can be applied as a filter to exclude overlapping products from their own campaigns. After this setup is complete, any SKU activated in a Symbiosys campaign is automatically filtered out of retailer-managed campaigns for the duration of the Symbiosys campaign.

Reference: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6275317  

Retailer setup steps

1. Confirm the Symbiosys supplemental feed is active - Symbiosys will create and maintain a supplemental feed in your Google Merchant Center that populates a selected custom_label field with the value symbiosys_active for relevant SKUs.

2. Create a product group in Google Ads - In Google Ads, go to Product groups, then subdivide products by creating a product group where:  custom_label = symbiosys_active

3. Exclude the product group from retailer-managed campaigns - Apply an exclusion for the symbiosys_active product group across all retailer-managed campaigns.

Important: The product group only needs to be created once; however, the exclusion filter must be applied to every retailer-managed campaign where Symbiosys overlap should be prevented.

Optional: retailer-first prioritization

Alternatively, retailers can also use the same custom_label field to indicate products that are already active in retailer-managed campaigns: retailer_active

Symbiosys can then exclude those products from Symbiosys campaigns in the same manner, supporting a first-in-wins prioritization model where whichever campaign first flags a SKU takes priority and the other campaign excludes it; to ensure this works correctly, the retailer_active value must be kept up to date based on retailer campaign flight dates.