Hand-off

Startica doesn’t touch your ad account. When a plan is ready, the campaign page shows a Hand off card with the steps for the platform and the files to download. You import or paste them into the platform’s own tool, review them there, and launch when you’re ready to spend. This page covers each platform’s files and steps, and how the daily budget in the files is worked out.

To plan a campaign first, see Ads.

The Hand off card

The card appears at the bottom of the campaign page once the campaign has at least one ad group and isn’t being planned. It has:

• a count of problems found by the checks, if any: errors to fix first, or warnings worth a look;
• the numbered steps for the platform (below);
• the downloads and Copy the brief;
• a note on the tracking links and the date the platforms’ limits were last checked.

Platform	Files
Google Ads	Google Ads Editor file and Campaign brief (Markdown)
Meta	Meta bulk import file and Campaign brief (Markdown)
Reddit	Campaign brief (Markdown) only: Reddit Ads has no import

File names start with the campaign’s current name in lowercase with dashes, for example search-offline-field-notes-google-ads-editor.csv, search-offline-field-notes-meta-import.csv and search-offline-field-notes-brief.md.

Fix any errors before you download. Startica doesn’t stop you, but the platform will reject those ads.

Google Ads

Steps

1. Install Google Ads Editor and sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Account → Import → From file, and choose the downloaded file. Review the changes, then Keep.
3. Check the campaign’s settings, set up conversion tracking for your goal if it isn’t already, and post the changes.
4. The campaign imports paused. Enable it in Google Ads when you’re ready to spend.

The Google Ads Editor file

The file is in the format Google Ads Editor documents for imports: tab-separated values, encoded as UTF-16 (little-endian, with a byte order mark), which is what Excel calls “Unicode Text”. It has a .csv extension, but it isn’t comma-separated, so a text editor or spreadsheet app may show it oddly. Import it into Editor as it is; don’t open and re-save it.

It has one row per item:

Row	What it sets
The campaign	Campaign (the campaign’s name), Campaign Type Search, Networks Google search, Budget (the daily budget), Budget type Daily, Bid Strategy Type and Campaign Status Paused
One per location	Location, from all the groups’ locations, set on the campaign
One per ad group	Ad Group and Ad Group Status Paused
One per keyword	Keyword and Criterion Type Broad, Phrase or Exact
One per negative keyword	Keyword and Criterion Type Negative Broad, on the ad group
One per ad	Ad type Responsive search ad, Headline 1 to Headline 15, Description 1 to Description 4, Path 1, Path 2, Final URL (the tagged link) and Status Paused

Bid Strategy Type is Maximize conversions when the plan’s bidding text mentions conversions, and Maximize clicks otherwise. Check it in Editor against the plan’s Bidding. A max CPC limit, if the plan suggests one, isn’t in the file; set it in Editor.

Editor matches column headers ignoring upper and lower case and spaces.

Meta

Steps

1. In Ads Manager, open the menu next to Create and choose Import ads in bulk (or Export & import → Import).
2. Choose the CSV and review the campaigns, ad sets and ads it creates.
3. Add an image to each ad: download them from the campaign’s Creatives page (4:5 for the feed, 9:16 for Stories and Reels).
4. Everything imports paused. Publish it in Ads Manager when you’re ready to spend.

For step 3, download the images from the campaign’s Creatives tab: the 4:5 or 1:1 size for the feed, and the 9:16 for Stories and Reels.

The Meta bulk import file

A comma-separated file in UTF-8, in the columns of Ads Manager’s bulk import, with one row per ad. Each row carries its campaign and ad set:

Column	Value
Campaign Name	The campaign’s name
Campaign Status	PAUSED
Campaign Objective	From the goal: Outcome Sales if it mentions a sale, purchase or buying; Outcome Leads if it mentions leads, signups, a trial or registering; otherwise Outcome Traffic
Buying Type	AUCTION
Ad Set Name	The ad group’s name
Ad Set Run Status	PAUSED
Ad Set Daily Budget	The daily budget divided evenly between the ad groups
Countries	The group’s locations, comma-separated
Ad Name	The group’s name and the ad’s number, for example “Field researchers 2”
Ad Status	PAUSED
Title	The ad’s headline
Body	The primary text
Link Description	The description
Link	The tagged link
Call to Action	The call to action, such as LEARN_MORE or SIGN_UP

The file has no images. Add one to each ad in Ads Manager after the import, or the ads can’t run.

The audience, interests and placements aren’t in the file either. Set them on each ad set in Ads Manager, from the brief. Check the countries too: Locations are written as you entered them, and Ads Manager may want them in its own form.

Reddit

Reddit Ads has no bulk import, so there’s no file. Use the Campaign brief instead: download it or click Copy the brief, and paste from it.

Steps

1. In Reddit Ads Manager, create a campaign with the objective that matches your goal.
2. Create one ad group per group below: set the communities, interests, locations and budget.
3. Create the ads: paste each headline, body and call to action, with its link (already tagged for analytics).
4. Review, then launch when you’re ready to spend.

Reddit’s promoted posts can carry an image; add it in Reddit Ads Manager. The 4:5 and 1:1 sizes from the Creatives tab fit Reddit’s feed.

The campaign brief

The brief is a Markdown file with every value you need to set the campaign up by hand, on any platform:

• the campaign’s name, platform and format, goal and landing page;
• bidding, the daily budget (and the test it comes from), the success metric and the plan’s summary;
• for each ad group: its name, angle and targeting (audience, keywords in [exact] / "phrase" / broad notation, negative keywords, communities as r/name, interests, placements, locations);
• for each ad: every headline, description, display path, body, primary text and call to action, and its tagged link.

Copy the brief puts the same text on the clipboard. For Google and Meta, it’s a useful checklist next to the import, and it’s the place to find what the import files don’t carry.

Daily budget

The files and the brief give a daily budget, worked out from the plan:

• With a test budget and test days: test budget ÷ test days. A 210 test over 21 days is 10.00 a day.
• Without a test yet: monthly budget ÷ 30.4. A monthly budget of 300 is 9.87 a day.

It’s rounded to the cent and is never less than 1. The campaign page shows the same figure under Test (“About 10.00 a day”). In the Meta file it’s split evenly across the ad sets: with two groups, 5.00 each.

Budgets are in your ad account’s currency. Startica doesn’t convert currencies.

After you launch

Set the campaign’s status in Startica to Handed off once it’s in the ad manager, and Running once it’s live, so the list shows where each one is. See Statuses. Only campaigns with those statuses put suggestions on Today.

Then enter spend from the ad manager on the campaign’s Results tab, weekly is plenty, to see what each ad costs per result and which to scale, keep, rewrite or stop. If you change ads in the ad manager, Startica doesn’t see it; edit them in Startica too if you want the two to match.

Related

• Ads
• Creatives
• Results and what to do next
• Limits and checks
• Analytics