Assign variants to rules offline

If you're working with several teams or have a lot of variants and rules, you might prefer to assign variants to rules offline. You can create the rules in Ads Creative Studio, then download a spreadsheet. You'll fill out the spreadsheet by matching up rule IDs with variant names. When you're done, you can upload it to your project to assign all your variants at once.

Step 1: Create your project and rules

Before you can assign variants to rules in bulk, you need to:

1. Create a project.
2. Customize a template.
3. Create variants. You can either add variants in Ads Creative Studio or create variants offline.
4. Create rules. You can't add new rules to a project using a bulk sheet.
5. Save your project. When you create new rules and variants, Ads Creative Studio only creates IDs for them after you save. Rule IDs and variant IDs are used to uniquely identify rules and variants in bulk upload sheets.

Step 2: Download a rule assignment sheet

After you've created your project, you can download a rule assignment sheet. You can also download a rules sheet to match up rule IDs with the signals that make up a rule.

1. Sign in to Ads Creative Studio.
2. Open the project you want to edit.
3. Go to the Variants tab.
4. Click More, then Download sheet.
5. Click Rule assignment sheet and Rules sheet (optional).

You can open the rules sheet to view all of the existing variants and rules for a project. The rule assignment sheet is what you'll edit and upload to Ads Creative Studio.

Step 3: Assign variants to each rule in the sheet

To match up a variant and a rule, you'll need the variant name and the rule ID from Ads Creative Studio. You can download the rules sheet to find the correct rule ID for each variant offline. You can also find rule IDs in the Rules tab of the project in Ads Creative Studio.

1. Open the rule assignment sheet you downloaded in your favorite spreadsheet editor. All rule assignment sheets start with three columns: Variant Id, Variant Name, Rule Id. There will be additional columns for each signal type used in your rules. These columns are for reference only.
2. For each row:
   1. If you're creating a new variant, leave the "Variant Id" blank. Ads Creative Studio creates a variant ID when you upload.
   2. Enter the variant name in the "Variant Name" column.
   3. In the "Rule Id" column, enter the rule ID you want to use the variant for.
   4. Don't edit or enter anything in the signal type columns (for example, "Audience" or "Topic"). Signal types can only be edited in Ads Creative Studio.
3. (Optional) You can add more than one variant to a rule. To assign another variant to a rule:
   1. Copy the row with the rule you want to assign another variant to.
   2. Don't edit the rule information in the copied row.
   3. To create a new variant, delete the variant ID in the copied row.
   4. Replace the variant name in the new row with the other variant you want to assign.
   5. Repeat these steps for each additional variant.

When you upload the sheet, Ads Creative Studio will create variant IDs and assign all variants with the same rule ID to the matching rule.

Step 4: Upload the rule assignment sheet

After you've finished filling out the rule assignment sheet, upload it to your project. But first make sure there are no project errors. If there are, you'll need to fix them before you can upload a sheet.

1. Sign in to Ads Creative Studio.
2. Open the project you want to edit.
3. Go to the Variants tab.
4. Click More, then Upload sheet.
5. Click Rule assignment sheet.
6. Click Start upload.
7. Select your finished rule assignment sheet.
   • If you're using a .csv file, click Select a file from your computer, then select the file.
   • If you're using Google Sheets, you'll need to share the sheet with an Ads Creative Studio service account: @partnercontent.gserviceaccount.com. You only need to share view access so that Ads Creative Studio can copy the variants.
8. Click Apply.
   • The project's rules are updated with the assigned variants. Go to the Rules tab to confirm that all rules have variants assigned. If you have trouble uploading your sheet, learn how to troubleshoot bulk rule assignment upload errors.
   • If you uploaded a variant sheet, the variants in the sheet will replace any variants you have in Ads Creative Studio.
9. Preview your rules to make sure everything was added correctly. If everything is correct, click Save to save your project. If you made a mistake, you can close the project without saving.