Product Alias & Model Alternates

Both the Product Alias tool and ability to Edit Libraries give you the freedom to present your make, model, and trim fields as you want in your search ads. The Product Alias tool is available for Auto Templates, and the libraries are for Prebuild Templates.

Product Alias - Auto Templates Only

To find the Product Alias tool, navigate to the “Search Templates” tab for your advertiser.

In the drop-down menu, select “Product Alias”.

On the next screen, you will see the option to add new elements, or bulk upload.

Add New Elements - continue scrolling for bulk upload instructions

Select the type of element you want to add.

This will open up the fields to enter the model and alias. In the “Model” field, enter the model as it is pulling in from the advertiser’s website. You can see how it is pulling in by downloading the data in the template settings, in the filtering section.

In the “Model Alias” field, enter what you want the model name to show as in Google Ads. Click submit.

Note: You can view your current product aliases in the drop-down lists further down the page.

These aliases will be available for all advertisers who share the account you made changes in. You will just need to apply the placeholders.

See “Adding Aliases/Alternates to Search Template Ads” below for next steps.

Bulk Uploads

Under “Bulk Upload”, you can download the empty Template file to fill in with your data:

The Excel file will come with example values, aliases, and actions filled in. You can remove these, they just show the structure to use.

You need to fill in an attribute (make, model, or trim), value (model name as shown in the data pulled from the advertiser’s website), alias (what you want the model to show as in Google Ads), and action (add or remove).

Upload the filled in template to the Product Alias tool and press submit.

You can immediately check that your values and aliases have updated by using the drop-down lists further down the page.

These aliases will be available for all advertisers who share the account you made changes in. You will just need to apply the placeholders.

See “Adding Aliases/Alternates to Search Template Ads” below for next steps.

Editing Libraries for Alternate Make/Model Names - Prebuild Only

In the Search Templates tab for your advertiser, select “Edit Libraries” from the Prebuild Templates drop-down menu.

In Libraries, select the edit/pencil icon for the library you want to add alternate values to.

Find the value you want to add an alternate field for. You can see models by clicking on their make, and see trims by clicking on their model. Click the pencil icon for that make/model/trim.

Two fields will pop up where the make/model/trim name was. The “Model” (or Make or Trim) field will populate with the value listed in the library. In the “Model Alt” (or Make Alt or Trim Alt) field, enter the make/model/trim name you want to show in Google Ads. Click save.

You will now see the Make/Model/Trim Alt in smaller text next to the model name.

To remove an alternate value, open the make/model/trim and clear the “Model Alt” (or Make Alt or Trim Alt) field. Press save, and the smaller text with the alternate value will be removed.

These alternates will be available for any templates that use the library the alternates were added in.

See “Adding Aliases/Alternates to Search Template Ads” below for next steps.

Adding Aliases/Alternates to Search Template Ads

Navigate back to the Search Templates tab of your advertiser.

In template settings, under “Ads”, open your Responsive Search Ads. In any headline, description, or path that is currently using the [model] placeholder, or in any you intend to create with a model placeholder, you will need to use the [model_alt:model] placeholder (or [make_alt:make], or [trim_alt:trim].

That placeholder tells Hoot to use the model’s alias first, and then default to the model pulled from the website if no alias is available. This makes it so that models that don’t have an alias are still included in the placeholder.

Once these changes are made, Save and Apply at the bottom of the template. You should then see the model name changes in your ads in Google Ads (note: this can take up to five minutes to push through).