Linking a WABA to Google Message Ads

For businesses who want to drive traffic to WhatsApp, Google Message Ads lets you add a clickable button to your responsive search ads in Google Ads. This button leads users straight to WhatsApp, allowing them to instantly start a conversation with your brand.

How it works

Message ads serve on both Android and iOS as an extension to text ads. When a message asset appears on the Google Search results page, potential customers are shown:

• Headlines

• Descriptions

• URL

If a potential customer clicks or taps on your headline, they’ll be directed to your website. However, if a potential customer clicks or taps on your messaging call to action or button, they’ll start a WhatsApp conversation with you.

Before you begin

To ensure the performance of your Ads is as expected, we highly recommend linking your Google Ads Account to 360Dialog, so we can directly monitor the data.

To do so, please share your Google Ads Account ID with your 360Dialog main point of contact, and we will send you a request to link the accounts.

Getting Started

To use message assets, make sure that you take the following actions.

• Have a registered number with 360Dialog Performance Messaging.

• In the Google Ads message assets configuration, select the country for the WhatsApp number. Then, in the 'WhatsApp phone number input' box, enter the WhatsApp Business number registered with 360Dialog

• Under “Starter message”, enter a message that meets Google Ads policies.

• Confirm that your headline has no mention of WhatsApp. Mentioning WhatsApp as a headline may result in clicks being redirected to your webpage, instead of the message asset.

WhatsApp Message Ads are only eligible to serve in select countries on iOS, unlike on Android. Please review the Google Ads documentation to see which countries are eligible to receive message ads on iOS.

Add message assets to a new campaign

1. In your Google Ads account, click the create button , and create a New Campaign.

1. Select your objective (Message Ads are compatible with Sales, Leads, and Website traffic).

1. After you confirm your conversion goals, select Search or Performance Max as your campaign type, then click Continue.

1. Define your Campaign Name.

2. Continue to configure your campaign as usual, until you reach the “Keywords and ads section”.

3. You will find the Messages section. Select “+ Message” ( ).

1. Then you can create and choose the messages to be used in this campaign. The message will appear as a pre-filled message when the customer clicks on 'Send Message" in the Ad.

1. Now you can complete the configuration of your campaign and customers will be ready to find you in WhatsApp!

See more information about message assets in the official Google Ads documentation.