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Use Case: Enhance Paid Media Campaigns with First-Party Data
A marketing team wants to activate their existing MCE Data Extensions to paid media channels for more targeted advertising campaigns. They need to ingest their MCE data into Data Cloud, create audience segments in Data Cloud, and activate the segments to platforms such as Google Ads and Meta.
Required Editions
| Available in: All Editions supported by Data Cloud. See Data Cloud edition availability. |
| Available with add-on license: Advertising Audiences |
(Optional) Step 1: Generate the Ad Activation Report
The Ad Activation report provides a comprehensive overview of your active Marketing Cloud Advertising audiences. Use this report to simplify your migration from Marketing Cloud Ads to Data Cloud Ads. The report is generated as a Data Extension, so you can ingest it into Data Cloud.
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In Ad Studio, select Ad Activation Report in the Administration
tab.
If a report was generated in the past, the new report indicates the date when the previous report was generated. You can access the new report under the Data Extensions tab in Email Studio or Contact Builder. The format of the report name is AdvertisingAudiences-ReportKit-{EID}-{MID}.
- For enterprise accounts, if you want to include data from all business units in a single report, select the Include all Business Units option.
- Click Generate Report. The report can take 30 minutes to be generated. When the report is complete, its status changes from “In Progress” to “Done”.
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After the report is generated, you can download the report or ingest it in Data
Cloud.
- Click Export to export the report.
- Create a data stream by using the Marketing Cloud connector to ingest the report in Data Cloud.
After creating the data stream, map it to a custom Data Model Object (DMO). You can then view your Advertising Audiences data as a Data Cloud report or create an AI agent to analyze the data and optimize the transfer.
Step 2: Ingest and Map Marketing Cloud Data to Data Cloud
Start by connecting MCE to Data Cloud and then create a data stream to ingest data into Data Cloud.
- Set Up a Marketing Cloud Engagement Connection in Data Cloud.
- Create a Data Stream from a Marketing Cloud Engagement Data Extension.
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Map your Data Lake Objects (DLOs) to Data Model Objects
(DMOs) to enable segmentation and activation.
You can use only mapped fields and objects with established relationships for segmentation and activation.
Step 3: Create Activation Targets and Activate Segments
An activation target stores authentication and authorization information for the platform on which you want to activate your audience segments.
Here are the platforms supported for activation.
- Google Ads
- Meta (Facebook)
- Amazon Ads
- SnapChat
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Create an External Activation Target for your paid
media platforms.
See Platform-Specific Requirements for External Activation for setup details on each supported platform.
- Create Standard Segments to break down your data. Consider your campaign goals and how you want to group your audiences before creating segments.
- Create an Activation for an External Platform to activate segments to paid media platforms.
Step 4: Access Your Audiences on Paid Media Platforms
Add the target user segment to your advertising campaigns.
- Log in to the account for your paid media platform (for example, Google Ads or Meta).
- Navigate to your audience or customer lists section.
- Locate your audience by using the name you assigned during activation.
- Add your audience to your advertising campaigns.
For segments activated to Google Ads or Amazon Ads, access audience insights directly within Data Cloud:
- Google Ads Insights
Note Google Ads insights are typically available 5 to 7 days after activation. - Amazon Ads Insights
- LinkedIn Insights
