First-party data onboarding is a process where a company uploads its own data to a third-party platform like Search Ads 360 to improve the targeting and measurement of its online advertising campaigns. It involves using a company's customer data to gain insights into customer behaviors, interests, and demographics, which can then be used to enhance bid automation and make advertising efforts more effective.

To improve audience understanding using first-party data, you can upload your own data to platforms like Search Ads 360. This allows you to gain insight into your customers' behaviors, interests, and demographics. With this information, you can target your advertising more effectively by showing ads related to specific interests or based on purchase history, thereby improving the chances of successful conversions.

Floodlight is a feature within Search Ads 360 that allows for the integration of your data with the platform. It enables you to track the performance of your advertising campaigns in real time and make data-driven decisions to optimize your efforts. By using Floodlight, you can improve your measurement and reporting, and enhance bid automation capabilities by incorporating your own data.

To automate the bidding process using first-party data, you can leverage the bid automation capabilities of Search Ads 360, which are actioned via the Floodlight tag. By incorporating your own data, you can set rules and algorithms to adjust your bids based on real-time performance data. This automation saves time and resources that would be spent on manual bid management.

First-party data onboarding helps control advertising costs by using your own data to inform bid automation. This ensures that your bids align with your business goals and budget. You can set caps on your bids for certain audience segments to prevent overspending or establish minimum bids to keep your ads competitively priced, thus managing your advertising costs more effectively.