Create a Promotion

Create a Promotion in Ads Manager to offer discounts, free delivery, or item-based incentives to customers on DoorDash. Promotion campaigns define the budget, schedule, and stores that participate in the offer.

How to create a Promotion

1. Log in and start a new campaign

• Log in to Ads Manager

• Select Create campaign

• Choose Promotion as your campaign type

2. Name your campaign

Choose a clear, descriptive campaign name between five and 128 characters that reflects:

• Promotion type

• Audience or targeting strategy

• Store group or region

Use a naming convention that makes campaigns easier to identify in reporting.

3. Select your campaign schedule

Define when your Promotion will run by setting a start date and an optional end date. Campaigns can run continuously or until the budget is exhausted. You can also control delivery timing more precisely using dayparting at the ad group level.

It's recommended to run a campaign for at least 30 days.

4. Choose your stores

Select stores and how they can participate in this campaign.

• Corporate standard — choose all stores, specific stores, or upload a CSV of store IDs to select which stores can participate in the Promotion. 

• Franchise opt-in — See how to create a franchise opt-in campaign →

There's a limit of 100,000 stores at the campaign level. You can further refine store groupings within ad groups if needed.

5. Set your budget

Define how much you want to spend by choosing:

• Lifetime budget: Recommended for campaigns with a start and end date. You can set a custom lifetime budget or choose No cap on budget if you don't want to limit total campaign spend.

• Weekly budget: Recommended for always-on campaigns. You can set a custom weekly budget or choose No cap on budget if you don't want to limit weekly spend.

This budget is shared across all ad groups within the campaign.

6. Create ad groups

Within each ad group, you can set dayparting, select store subsets, and choose audience targeting:

• Customer Behavior

• Customer Profile on DoorDash

• Customer Interest

See the Targeting Overview for guidance on which audiences to select.

Ad groups share the campaign budget, with spend distributed based on performance. Use multiple ad groups to test different audiences, dayparts, or store strategies within the same campaign. 

7. Build your promotion

To configure your promotion offer, first, select a Promotion type:

• Spend X, Get Y — triggered when a customer meets a minimum order amount

• Buy X, Get Y — triggered when a customer purchases a specific item

Then define what customers get:

• Order Discount — set a % off or $ off amount, with an optional maximum discount cap

• Free Item — a specific item at no cost

• $0 Delivery Fee — waived delivery fee

Finally, set any limits — such as maximum redemptions per customer (unlimited or a custom limit).

8. Review and launch

Before launching your campaign, review all settings to ensure everything is configured correctly. This includes your campaign details, promotion setup, and billing method. You can navigate back through each step of the setup flow to make changes as needed. Once you're ready, launch your campaign.

After it goes live, you can:

• Monitor campaign performance in Ads Manager

• Review audience and store-level performance

• Adjust targeting, schedules, or promotion settings based on results

What to do next

• Learn how to target your Promotion campaign to the right audience