Custom labels are extra feed attributes you define — like margin tier, seasonality, or bestseller status — that carry your own business logic into the ad network. The network can only segment and bid on what it can see, so custom labels are how you group products into campaigns it doesn't already know how to build.
What a custom label is#
A custom label is a field you attach to each product that holds a value only you decide — high-margin, summer, clearance, bestseller. Unlike price, brand, or availability, the ad network has no idea what these mean; you define them, and the network simply passes the value through so your campaigns can filter and bid on it.
Ad networks like Google and Meta reserve a small, fixed set of custom label slots for exactly this purpose — named custom_label_0, custom_label_1, and so on. [VERIFY: exact number of custom_label slots per network — e.g. Google Merchant Center and Meta]
Why custom labels matter#
Without a custom label, there's nothing to segment on. Ad networks let you split products into ad groups or ad sets and set different bids or budgets per group — but only along attributes present in your feed. If your feed carries no signal for "high margin" or "seasonal," you can't build a campaign around those ideas, no matter how important they are to your business.
Custom labels close that gap. They let you push the way you think about your products — profitability, timing, performance, priority — into the feed, so your campaigns can act on it. A few common uses:
- Margin tier — bid more aggressively on high-margin products, less on thin-margin ones.
- Seasonality — mark products as
summerorholidayso you can switch campaigns on and off with the season. - Bestseller or performance band — group your proven winners so they get their own budget.
- Clearance or promotion — flag discounted stock for a dedicated sale campaign.
- Price band — separate budget-priced products from premium ones.
The value itself is just text you choose. What matters is that it's consistent, so the ad network can group every product that shares a label.
How to set custom labels in Renable#
In Renable, a custom label is another field on your catalog — you fill it the same way you set any field. The usual approach is a rule: a condition that selects a group of products, and a Set field action that writes the custom label value onto them.
For example, one rule matches every product whose price is at least a certain amount and sets a custom label of high-margin. Every matching product gets the label at once, and new products that match are labeled automatically on each import — you set it up once and never revisit it.
The full mechanics — conditions, actions, and building a value up step by step — live in Fixing your feed data with rules. To label a whole category, brand, or price band in one move, see Bulk-fix a whole category with one rule.
If your feed already contains custom label columns, you don't need a rule at all — add them as custom attributes in the Attributes group on the Mapping tab and map your columns onto them. See Mapping your feed fields.
Custom labels vs. product categories#
A product category tells the ad network what a product is — it's a shared taxonomy the network already understands and uses to match your products to searches and placements. A custom label tells the network something only you know about the product — how you want to group it for bidding. Categories are for classification; custom labels are for your campaign strategy.
Or ask Aimée#
You don't have to build the rule by hand. Describe the segment in plain language — "add the label clearance to everything on sale," or "give every product with a margin over 40% a high-margin label" — and Aimée can set up the condition and the Set field action for you, then publish once you approve.
FAQ#
How many custom labels can I use?
Each ad network gives you a fixed number of custom label slots. [VERIFY: exact count of custom_label slots per network] Within each slot you can use as many distinct values as you like — the limit is on the number of label fields, not the values inside them.
Do custom labels change how my ads look?
No. Custom labels are invisible to shoppers. They only exist so you can organize, filter, and bid on products inside the ad network's campaign tools.