Product mapping is how you “map” the products that you are selling to a channel’s product categories. Categorizing products help ensure that ads are shown in the correct search results. 

Google Shopping for example requires that your products are mapped to Google’s Product Categories, and will not display ads for products that are not mapped.

Not all channels require products to be mapped to their categories, and some channels have very strict requirements for category mapping. Check the support article for the individual channel you’re mapping with for further details.

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Product mapping is done on the Ad Management tab.

Select the channel - from the navigation panel on the left choose the channel you want to map products for.

Filter Products - use the filters panel on the right to set up a new filter for products where the channel category is not set.

Once applied this will show you a list of your products that have no channel category. If you’re just getting started with a new channel this could be the entire list of all your products, or could just be a few new items that you’ve added.

Select an Item - If you select an item, you can then select the folder icon to map that product to a channel category

Select a product Category - You can search for relevant categories for the product you’re mapping, or you can view the complete category list for that channel to browse for the most relevant category.

Check the Mapping - Once a product is mapped, you’ll see the blue folder icon next to it. You can hover over this icon to see the current category mapping.
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If you’ve got a lot of products to map, you don’t want to be doing them one by one. Adcurve allows you to easily map multiple products at a time.

Filter Products - use the filters panel on the right to set up a new filter for products where the channel category is not set. (you can read more about filters in section 4 of our Ad Management article)

Add a second filter - use additional filters to find multiple products that should be mapped to the same category. You might chose to filter by a category you’ve already set up in your shop, or using product keywords or titles.

Select all the results - check that all the results are relevant to the same category, use the select all button to highlight all the products, and then select the folder icon to start choosing a product category.

Select a Product Category - You can search for relevant categories for the product you’re mapping, or you can view the complete category list for that channel to browse for the most relevant category.

You'll notice at the bottom of the mapping pop-up is a check-box to "Apply this action to all current and future products that match the following conditions". If you leave this unchecked, it will just map the selected products to the category and do nothing more. 

However, if the box is checked, you'll be setting up a category mapping rule to be applied to future products.

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When you confirm the category mapping you'll be asked if you want to apply the same action to future product ads. Hovering over text next to the checkbox will show you the conditions for the rule.

When you hit Map Products button,  a new rule will be created to map the same product category to any new products added to your shop that meet the conditions.

So, in this case, any new products that I add to my shop that have a shop category containing "console" will automatically be mapped to the channel's "Video Game Consoles" category.
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​If left unchecked, the mapping action will affect only the products you selected, and no others.

You can view the rule that you've created under the Rules tab on the right hand panel in Ad-Management.
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It's not currently possible to edit a rule, but you can either pause it, or delete it entirely if you no longer want it to affect future products. 

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If you need any further support with Product Mapping, or if something is missing from our article, please don't hesitate to start a chat with us at any time using the Intercom button in the bottom right of your screen.