Search Ads 360 (SA360) is Google's enterprise software for running paid search campaigns across several search engines from one interface. An advertiser or agency links its accounts on Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo! JAPAN Ads and Baidu, then builds, edits, bids on and reports on all of them together. The product exists because large search programmes run to millions of keywords spread over many accounts, engines and markets, and the engines' own tools manage only their own inventory. SA360 sits on top of those native tools, using their programming interfaces to push changes and pull data. It is sold within Google Marketing Platform (GMP), beside Display & Video 360 (DV360) and Campaign Manager 360 (CM360).

How the platform is organised

The current version arranges accounts in three tiers. A manager account sits at the top and holds users and settings that apply to everything beneath it. Sub-manager accounts sit in the middle, usually one per brand or business unit. Client accounts sit at the bottom and hold the actual campaigns, each one mirroring an account on an engine. Before 2022 they were called agency, advertiser and engine account.

The middle tier is tied to the ad server. Each sub-manager must first exist as an advertiser in CM360, according to Google's help centre, because SA360 borrows CM360's conversion tag, Floodlight. Floodlight records actions such as purchases on the advertiser's site and attributes them to the preceding click. That gives SA360 one de-duplicated conversion count across engines, rather than a Google figure and a Microsoft figure that may both claim the same sale.

Daily work follows a cycle:

  • Build: campaigns are created in SA360 or synced from the engines. Templates generate keywords and ads from product inventory feeds, and in-interface bulksheets let teams edit thousands of rows at once.
  • Bid: SA360 bid strategies set bids against a target, such as cost per acquisition or return on ad spend, across a pool of campaigns that can span engines. Google's documentation says one portfolio can mix Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo! JAPAN and Baidu campaigns.
  • Measure: Floodlight conversions, offline conversions and linked Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data feed reports and bidding.
  • Report: results are read in the interface, through Data Studio, or through the Search Ads 360 Reporting API, whose release notes start on December 5, 2022 and were last updated on August 1, 2026.

Bidding runs at two speeds. Intraday bidding recalculates bids every six hours, according to Google. Auction-time bidding sets a bid at the moment of each auction, using signals such as device, location and time of day, but only on engines that expose it. For Google Ads, auction-time bidding requires conversion sharing to be switched on at the sub-manager level, which sends SA360's conversions, Floodlight included, into the Google Ads conversion columns. If it is later switched off, search campaigns fall back to intraday bidding. Budget bid strategies add a further layer, moving a fixed monthly budget between campaigns.

On the buy side, the users are agency search teams at holding companies, in-house teams at retailers, travel firms and banks, and resellers in Google's Marketing Platform Partners programme. On the other side are the engines themselves, whose application programming interfaces (APIs) decide which of their features SA360 can expose. Pricing is not published.

From DART Search to SA360

DoubleClick bought Performics, a search and affiliate marketing company, for $58 million in cash in May 2004 and folded its search technology into its DART suite as DART Search. Google agreed to buy DoubleClick in April 2007 and completed the deal on March 11, 2008. It sold Performics itself to Publicis in 2008 but kept the search software.

Under Google the tool became DoubleClick Search. On March 22, 2011, Ariel Bardin, Google's director of product management, previewed a version 3, known as DS3, "rebuilt from scratch" after nine months of customer interviews. He dated the original product to 2006. By May 2012 Google said six of the ten largest agencies used it. In July 2016 Google brought its Smart Bidding label, covering Target CPA, Target ROAS and Enhanced CPC, to DoubleClick Search as well as AdWords.

The current name arrived with the June 27, 2018 rebrand that split Google's advertising products into Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager. DoubleClick Search became Search Ads 360, and product names and logos changed on July 24, 2018. In September 2019, Google brought Google Ads auction-time bidding into Search Ads 360, citing beta tests in which advertisers saw conversion lifts of 15% to 30% at the same or better return on investment.

The largest change came on February 8, 2022, when Google launched a new Search Ads 360 rebuilt on the technology behind Google Ads. The rebuild, known internally as Project Amalgam according to the US court record, gave SA360 near-immediate access to new Google Ads features, including Performance Max, and added more than ten Microsoft Advertising features such as responsive search ads and call extensions. A connector for the new product reached Data Studio the same month, and in March 2022 Google allowed GA4 properties to link to SA360.

Migration took two years. In April 2023 Google told advertisers to move through an "Experience Hub" before the previous version shut. Agency guidance at the time put the loss of access between February and April 2024, with at least 60 days' notice. The old Looker Studio connector stopped accepting new reports on April 30, 2024, and the legacy reporting API was retired on June 30, 2024. Google's developer site now states that the previous Reporting API "is decommissioned".

Why it matters

SA360 is where a large share of the world's biggest search budgets are actually managed. During the US search monopoly trial, evidence showed that about 31% of search ad revenue on Google and Bing flowed through third-party search engine marketing (SEM) tools, and that SA360 handled 76% of the ad dollars passing through those tools, according to Judge Amit Mehta's August 5, 2024 opinion. Decisions about which engine features SA360 supports, and when, therefore shape how enterprise money moves between Google and its rivals.

It is also the main route by which search connects to the rest of GMP. GA4 added a dedicated SA360 report and SA360 source dimensions in December 2023, and in June 2024 Floodlight linking began sending GA4 conversions to CM360 configurations used by SA360 and DV360 bidding. Reporting work keeps shifting too: Data Studio, which Google renamed back from Looker Studio in April 2026, gained SA360 keyword and ad label fields in March 2024.

Limitations and disputes

The central criticism is neutrality. Google marketed SA360 as "a neutral third party", and a Google witness repeated that aim at trial, yet the tool is owned by the dominant engine. Colorado and other states argued that Google slowed SA360 support for Microsoft features, most notably auction-time bidding, which Google Ads campaigns had inside SA360 from September 2019. Microsoft asked for it in the summer of 2019 and eventually sought a resolution at chief executive level; at trial in 2023 it still had not arrived, while Skai, Adobe and Marin offered it. Frederick van der Kooi, a former Microsoft advertising executive, testified that SA360's support could affect Microsoft "to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue".

Mehta rejected the claim. He held that Google had no duty to deal with a rival, that prioritising "an innovative replacement" of SA360 was not unlawful, and that the states had not shown any advertiser moved spend away from Bing because of the gap. Correlation, he wrote, "does not equal causation".

Feature lag affects Google's own products as well. Google Ads betas have historically reached SA360 late, a gap Google told partners in 2025 it would close with "beta synchronicity", according to agency Adswerve. Other limits are structural: auction-time bidding depends on conversion sharing, offline-conversion strategies stall if uploads stop, and Floodlight ties SA360 to CM360.

Not the same as

  • Google Ads is Google's own buying interface and reaches only Google inventory. SA360 manages Google Ads accounts alongside other engines but does not replace them.
  • Microsoft Advertising Editor and similar native tools are single-engine editors. SA360 is a cross-engine management layer.
  • Display & Video 360 is GMP's demand-side platform for programmatic display, video and audio; SA360 handles search and, increasingly, retail media.
  • Portfolio bid strategy, Target CPA and shared budget are bidding and budget settings that SA360 uses, not names for the platform. The Google Display Network is a body of inventory, not a management tool.
  • Search Ads on Apple's App Store is an unrelated product with a similar name.

Recent developments

Bidding has been opened further to Microsoft. PPC Land reported on August 25, 2024 that SA360 could use Microsoft's auction-time bidding inside its bid strategies, powered by shared Floodlight data. Stephen Yap, a managing director at Google Marketing Platform, said combined portfolios typically produce about 5% more conversions or conversion value. Google's own help centre dates the beta to February 14, 2025.

Retail media is the main new channel. Google added offsite retail media to SA360 in a March 2024 beta, with Lowe's as an early tester. Criteo became the first onsite partner on September 10, 2025, and Koddi brought its network into SA360 on June 17, 2026. Data inputs are widening as well: Data Manager API version 1.7, released on May 28, 2026, extended offline conversion ingestion to SA360, CM360 and DV360. Google also added generative templates for responsive search ads in May 2025 and an AI Help Guide in August 2025.

Timeline

  • May 2004: DoubleClick agrees to buy Performics for $58 million; its search tool becomes DART Search
  • 2006: Original DoubleClick search management product launches, according to Google
  • April 2007: Google agrees to acquire DoubleClick
  • March 11, 2008: Google completes the DoubleClick acquisition; Performics later sold to Publicis
  • March 22, 2011: Google previews DoubleClick Search version 3 (DS3)
  • July 2016: Smart Bidding launches in AdWords and DoubleClick Search
  • June 27, 2018: DoubleClick Search renamed Search Ads 360 under Google Marketing Platform
  • September 2019: Google Ads auction-time bidding added to SA360
  • December 17, 2020: Colorado-led states file suit, including claims over SA360
  • February 8, 2022: New Search Ads 360 launched on Google Ads technology
  • March 2022: GA4 linking to SA360 announced
  • December 5, 2022: First release note for the new Reporting API
  • April 2023: Google urges upgrades ahead of the previous version's 2024 shutdown
  • August 2023: Judge Mehta sends the SA360 claim to trial
  • December 2023: GA4 adds a dedicated SA360 report
  • March 2024: Offsite retail media beta in SA360
  • June 30, 2024: Legacy SA360 Reporting API retired
  • August 5, 2024: Mehta rules Google is not liable over SA360
  • February 14, 2025: Microsoft automated bidding beta in SA360, per Google
  • September 10, 2025: Criteo becomes first onsite retail media partner
  • May 28, 2026: Data Manager API v1.7 adds SA360 offline conversions
  • June 17, 2026: Koddi integrates its commerce media network
  • August 1, 2026: Latest Reporting API release note

Summary

Who: Google builds and sells Search Ads 360. Agency search teams, in-house teams at large advertisers and Google Marketing Platform resellers operate it, while Microsoft, Yahoo! JAPAN and Baidu supply the engines it connects to.

What: An enterprise search management platform that builds, bids on, measures and reports on campaigns across several engines from one interface, using Floodlight for de-duplicated conversions.

When: It descends from DART Search (2004) and DoubleClick Search, was renamed Search Ads 360 on June 27, 2018, rebuilt on February 8, 2022, and fully replaced its previous version in 2024.

Where: On the buy side, above the engines' native tools, inside Google Marketing Platform alongside DV360, CM360 and Analytics 360.

Why: To let large advertisers manage millions of keywords and shared budgets across engines with one conversion source, a role that has drawn antitrust scrutiny because the tool belongs to the largest engine it manages.