Baidu

This article will outline the support offered by the Marin platform for Baidu. 

Supported Functions 

Marin currently supports the following features for Baidu publisher accounts:

Accounts

  • Sponsored Search Only

Campaigns

  • Create campaign
  • Edit Campaign Name
  • Mobile Bid Adjustment
  • Daily Budget
  • Ad Rotation
  • Ad Scheduling
  • Geo-Targeting
  • Negative Keywords
  • Device Level Reporting

Groups

  • Edit Group Name
  • Group Search Bid / CPC
  • Negative Keywords

Creatives

  • Create ads
  • Edit ads
  • Headline
  • Description 1
  • Description 2
  • Display URL
  • Mobile Display URL
  • Destination URL
  • Mobile Destination URL
  • Mobile Preferred Ad

Keywords

  • Create keywords
  • Edit keywords
  • Match Type (Broad, Exact & Phrase only)
  • Search Bid / CPC
  • Destination URL*
  • Mobile Destination URL*

*If you are using redirects, the supported features and column headers for bulk uploads will be Click Through URL and Mobile Click Through URL. 

Unsupported Functions 

The platform does not currently offer support for the following features:

Accounts

  • Brand Zone
  • Brand Landmark
  • Content Network
  • Display Advertising / Image Ads
  • Premium Display Network
  • Daily Budget
  • Geo-Targeting

Campaigns

  • Budget Scheduling
  • IP Address Exclusion

Groups

  • Device Level Reporting

Keywords

  • Quality Score
  • Advanced (Extended) Phrase Match Type
    • Phrase-synonym
    • Phrase-core
    • Phrase-exact

Extensions

  • Sitelinks
  • Call Extensions (click to call)
  • Image Extensions
  • App Extensions

Conversion Tracking

  • Publisher Tracking
  • Baidu Analytics

Marin Feature Support For Baidu 

The following core features of our platform are supported for the Baidu publisher:

  • Campaign linking / unlinking
  • Daily cost and revenue reporting
  • Bi-directional sync
  • General campaign management (single, multi and bulk edit)
  • Bidding (no mobile bid adjustment recommendations)
  • URL builder
  • Dimension
  • Marin Tracker

Baidu Account Linking 

To link a Baidu account to the Marin platform, you will need the following Baidu credentials:

  • Username
  • Password
  • API token (apply with your Baidu account manager)

You can then follow the standard process for linking accounts as explained in our help center article

Duplicated Keywords In Ad Groups 

Baidu takes the following approach for duplicated keywords in Ad Groups:

  • Same keywords with same of different match types are not allowed in the same Ad Groups.
  • Same keywords with same or different match type are allowed in the same Campaign, as long as they are in different Ad Groups.
  • Same keywords with same or different match type are allowed in different Campaigns, since they will be in different Ad Groups as well.

How Bytes And Characters Counted In Baidu And Marin 

We have a full help center article about this topic which you can read by clicking here

Baidu Publisher Limits 

Following are some of the limits of the Baidu publisher.

Publisher Settings

Distribution Types Search, Content
Budget

Account (daily)

min: CNY 50

max: CNY 100,000

Campaign (daily)

Search min: CNY 50

Content min: CNY 10

max: CNY 100,000

Negative Keywords Campaign, Group
Search Bid

Group

min: CNY 0.01

max: CNY: 999.99 or budget

Keyword

min: CNY 0.01

max: CNY 999.00

Content Bid (not supported)

Group

min: CNY 0.05

Creative Restrictions

Note: Baidu makes distinction between characters and bytes for Creative Limits. But since Chinese characters and other Double-Byte symbols count as 2 chars, effectively it is counting bytes. Baidu length restrictions are in bytes, not characters. Note each Chinese character counts as 2 bytes.

Search 
Headline: min 9, max 50 bytes 
Description 1: min 9 , max 80 bytes 
Description 2: min 0, max 80 bytes 
Display URL: max 36 bytes 
Destination URL: 1017 bytes 

Content 
Headline: 28 bytes 
Description 1: 40 bytes (min: 8 bytes) 
Description 2: 40 bytes (min: 8 bytes) 
Display URL: 35 bytes 
Destination URL: 1024 bytes 

Keyword Restrictions Keyword: max 40 bytes (20 Chinese chars) 
Destination URL: 1017 bytes
Max End Date Baidu has no max end date.

Publisher Limits

Campaigns per Account 100
Groups per Account 1,000
Negative Keywords per Campaign 100
Negative Keywords per Account 100
Keywords per Group 5,000
Creatives per Group 50

Using 3rd Party Redirects With Baidu 

By default, Baidu does not allow 3rd party redirects. They only allow URLs with the same domain as the registered website when opening the Baidu account. To use 3rd party redirects, for example Marin Tracker, you must 'whitelist' the Marin Tracking domain name with Baidu (please reach out to your Baidu account manager for more information about this).

Note that generally, they will need a working Destination URL with 3rd party redirect. The whitelisting process takes about 3 – 5 working days.

Tracking Keyword-Level Conversion With Baidu 

Because Baidu does not use the {keyword} ValueTrack parameter, the platform is not able to attribute conversions to the keyword-level if creative-level URLs are used. i.e. you can’t use Creative ID + Keyword + Match Type for attribution as Keyword is not available.

To attribute conversions to the keyword-level, you must use a keyword-level URL .i.e. Keyword ID + Creative ID attribution.

Due to a change in the Baidu API, Marin is no longer able to support Baidu sitelinks.

To track Baidu sitelink conversions, you can only use the officially unsupported 'dummy keywords' method. As with any dummy keywords, you will need to remove the {creative} ValueTrack parameter.

Marin Tracker Inferred Device Support (IDS) With Baidu 

If URLs do not include device parameter and are not using a combined tracking value approach, Marin Tracker will use IDS to populate the Device column of the Tracker revenue file.

IDS will populate device column with Computer, Tablet, Mobile or Others. This is different to Baidu’s interpretation - Computer or Mobile (includes tablet and mobile). For example, when using IDS, Baidu device-level cost and revenue data will not line up. Our recommendation is to tag Baidu URLs with the device parameter. This will then mean that the device-level cost data aligns.

How Baidu Quality Score Works 

The Baidu quality score is based on a scale of 0 – 10, with 10 being the highest score. The higher the quality score, the more competent the keyword becomes. When a Baidu keyword is created, it doesn’t start with lowest quality score of 0, it actually starts with 1.

Baidu Valuetrack Parameters

ValueTrack Description
{keywordid} Baidu’s dynamic keyword ID (globally unique). Return 0 if keyword ID is not available
{creative} Baidu’s dynamic Baidu creative ID (globally unique)
{mediatype} Baidu’s dynamic distribution ID. Search = 1, Content = 2
{placement} Returns placement’s domain name when ad served on content network
{matchtype} Baidu’s dynamic match type parameter. Exact = 1, Phrase = 2, Broad = 3
{adposition}

Search ads’s location and ranking. Format: Location + Ranking

There are 5 ad locations:

  • cl: PC left hand side, no background colour
  • clg: PC left hand side, with background colour
  • cr: PC right hand side
  • mt: Mobile top
  • mb: Mobile bottom

For example:

cl3 means PC left hand side, no background colour, rank 3

{pagenum}

Page number of the ad. To determine the overall ad position, use it in conjunction with {adposition}.

For example:

{adposition} = cr1 and {pagenum} = 2 means the ad is on PC right hand side no background colour, position 1 on page 2

{abtest}

Shows whether the ad has enrolled in Baidu AB testing and status.

  • Blank means not enrolled
  • 0 means enrolled and the ad is controlled
  • 1 means enrolled and the ad is test subject
{dongtai} Returns 1 for dynamic ads. Returns 0 for not dynamic.

Marin Macro Support For Baidu 

The following Marin platform macros are supported for the Baidu publisher:

Marin Macro Value
[distribution] {mediatype}
[keyword_text] “Blank”
[matchtype] “Blank”
[creative_id] {creative}
[device]

Baidu do not have device valuetrack parameter. Marin will hard code the value in the URL.

  • Inserts c for Destination URL
  • Inserts m for Mobile Destination URL

General API Questions 

Q: Does Baidu Have The Concept Of Google’s MCC?

A: Baidu doesn’t have MCC at this time.

Q: The platform Is Granted An Agency Token. What Does That Get Us?

With this agency token, the platform can access multiple accounts by end-customer’s username/password. End-customers under agency token do not need to apply for their own API tokens.

Q: How Does The Agency API Token Differ From Regular API Token?

A: Due to Baidu’s system capacity, creative + keyword level data is only provided to those with agency API token.

Q: Does Baidu Show The Keyword Min CPC?

A: While Keyword min CPC is now available in Baidu's UI, unfortunately, this information is not available via the API.

Q: What platform Support Is Available For Baidu Integrated Campaigns?

A: Please read our Help article on platform Support for Baidu Integrated Campaigns.

Baidu Integrated Search Campaigns (整合型搜索推广)

Q: What happen if my API quota exceeded

A: You can either reach out to Baidu to request increase your API quota. If this is not possible, please reach out to your Marin account team. We might be able to use Marin’s API token instead.

Written by Marketing @ Marin Software

Last published at: December 20th, 2023