Create a Sponsored Listings Campaign
Create a Sponsored Listings campaign to define the budget, schedule, stores, bidding strategy, and audience targeting for your Sponsored Listings advertising on DoorDash.
How to create a Sponsored Listings campaign
1. Log in to Ads Manager and start a new campaign
Log in, select Create campaign, and then choose Sponsored Listings as your campaign type.
2. Enter a campaign name
Campaign names must be between 5 and 128 characters. Consider using a naming convention that reflects targeting, store groups, dayparting, or bid strategy.
3. Set your campaign schedule
Choose a start date and an end date. Campaigns run on Pacific Time (PT). If no end date is selected, the campaign continues until its budget is exhausted.
Tip: The recommended run time is 30+ days.
4. Select stores and how they can participate in this campaign.
Corporate standard — you select which stores run the campaign. Choose all stores, specific stores, or upload a CSV of store IDs.
Franchise opt-in — See how to create a franchise opt-in campaign.
Tip: Once you select your stores, you can further subdivide the store groups in your ad groups, as long as all stores you selected to be included in your campaign are included. Campaigns support up to 100,000 stores.
5. Set your campaign budget
Enter a custom budget or use DoorDash's recommended budget.
Click Continue to move to the ad group setup.
Tip: People often organize their ad groups around specific strategies around location or store performance.
6. Create an ad group and name it
Ad groups control store lists, bids, audience targeting, and dayparting. Ad groups share one campaign budget that is distributed among ad groups based on performance.
Learn more about how campaigns and ad groups work together.
7. Select a bid strategy
Automated bidding uses DoorDash machine learning to optimize bids. Custom bidding is available for advertisers testing specific bid strategies. The minimum bid is $3.
Tip: Automated bidding is recommended for most campaigns. Consider custom bidding only when testing specific CPA targets across ad groups.
8. Choose an ad schedule
Your ad can run continuously, or you can create a custom dayparting schedule.
9. Select audience targeting
Choose audiences that align with campaign objectives:
Customer Behavior
Customer Profile on DoorDash
Customer Interest
For guidance on which audiences to select and how to layer them, see the Targeting overview.
10. Create additional ad groups as needed
Ad groups for the same campaign share that campaign's budget. Use multiple ad groups when you want to:
Compare audience targeting strategies
Test different bidding approaches
Run ads during different dayparts
Measure performance across different store groups
11. Review campaign settings and launch
Confirm campaign configuration, including billing settings, and preview the final ad before publishing.
Optimization tips
Give campaigns time to gather performance data: Avoid making major changes right after launch. Run Sponsored Listings for at least two weeks before adjusting budgets, bids, targeting, dayparting schedules, or campaign structure so you can establish a performance baseline.
Start with broad targeting: Broad targeting helps maximize reach and gives DoorDash more opportunities to identify customers likely to place an order. Add audience restrictions only when they support a specific objective, such as acquiring new customers, re-engaging lapsed customers, reaching DashPass members, or testing interest-based audiences.
Test one variable at a time: When optimizing performance, adjust one major variable at a time, such as budget, bid strategy, audience targeting, dayparting schedule, or store groups. This makes it easier to understand what actually moved the needle.
For more guidance on audience setup and targeting strategy, see the Sponsored Listings targeting playbook.
What to do next
Get an overview of Ads’ reporting capabilities
Learn how to target your Sponsored Listings campaign to the right audience
