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Toast Advertising Overview
Toast Advertising allows you to launch, manage, and pay for advertising campaigns on third-party platforms like Google and Meta—all without leaving Toast. It’s designed to help you attract new guests and boost sales by ensuring your restaurant appears prominently when potential customers search for a place to eat.
With Toast Advertising, you can:
Quickly launch seamless ad campaigns through Google or Meta, all within Toast Web.
Create ads connected to your Toast Online Ordering, Catering & Events, and Toast Tables pages so you can easily track all orders and reservations placed from your ad campaigns.
Review all existing ads in the Campaign Performance Dashboard, which clearly shows how your ads are performing and highlights your return on ad investment—helping you identify the most effective ads and tailor future campaigns accordingly.
Typical users running campaigns with Toast Advertising are seeing an average return on ad spend of over 8X.* |
Connect Your Google Business and Meta accounts to Toast Advertising
Toast Advertising allows you to run ad campaigns on third-party platforms like Google and Meta directly within Toast. To get started, you are required to authenticate and link your Google Business and Meta accounts. To connect your Google Business and Meta accounts:
InToast Web,navigate toAdvertising. If you have not yet purchased Toast Advertising, you will be redirected to Toast Shop to complete your purchase.
Once you have purchased Toast Advertising, select Get Started to begin.
If applicable, select your location.
Using the dropdown, specify your goal for this ad.
Note: You can choose a “brand awareness” goal for your Meta campaigns which optimizes your ad for reach and engagement rather than driving specific actions like ordering online. This goal type is only available for Meta campaigns and is not compatible with Google Ads campaigns at this time.
Select either Google Ads or Meta Ads.
If you are continuing with Google Ads, follow the steps below:
Complete the prompts and proceed with connecting your Google Business profile by selecting Connect Google.
Select the checkbox next to I have read and agreed to…to accept the Google terms and conditions.
Select the blue Connect and create account button.
Login and authenticate your Google Business profile using the email address connected to your Google Business account. If you know this, select Yes, Log in to Google, and select the proper account
Note: If you need help finding this email, select either Check ownershipor What’s Business Profile?for further information.
Provide Toast access to your Google Business account by selecting Allow.
Select the checkbox next to the business locations you would like to link to Toast Advertising.
Select the Google Business profile you would like to map it to in the dropdown menu to the right of your selected business. Select Save and Continue.
Select Confirm. To continue with setting up your first campaign, select Continue with Next Step and follow the steps in the Create Your First Ad Campaign section below.
If you are continuing with Meta Ads, follow the steps below:
Select Connect to Facebook.
Select the checkbox next to I have read and agreed to…to accept the Meta terms and conditions.
Select Connect and create accounts.
Select Next.
Select Next again.
Select Connect Facebook.
Select Continue as Meta Business Page Name (this should be your restaurant page).
Select the pages you would like to grant Toast access to and select Continue.
Select Continue again.
Review Toast’s Access Requests and select Save.
Select Got It.
Select the Facebook pages you would like to map your location(s) to in the dropdown menu to the right of your selected business. Select Save and Continue.
Note: You must have a Facebook page for your business in order to connect your Meta account. Instagram-only connection is not supported at this time.
Create Your First Ad Campaign
You must have the 4.8 Marketing Info or 4.1 Sales Reports permission enabled to access Toast Advertising. |
To create your first ad campaign with Toast Advertising:
Navigate to Advertising.
Select the + Create Campaign buttonin the top left corner of the dashboard.
Select the location you want to run ads for and your campaign goal from the following sales boost options:
On-premise + Toast Online Ordering
On-premise + Toast
On-premise + Toast Online Catering
Verify the channel you would like to use to run your ad. For your first campaign, the channel must be Google.
Select Generate Campaign.
You can now set your campaign details, such as campaign name, the business location this ad should be run for, which website page you would like your guests to land on when they click on your ad, and the location of your target audience.
You can set the location for your target audience by radius (set a number of miles surrounding your restaurant), or by zip code.
Note: Zip code is typically best used by restaurants in urban, walkable areas.
Once you’ve adjusted the campaign details and select Save and Continue, you will now be able to view and adjust the text within the campaign itself. Toast automatically creates a few suggestions for you based on information about your business and campaign goals, but you can adjust all of the fields on this page. You will find an example advertisement on the right side of your page that will reflect your changes in real-time so you can preview your ad as you make edits. You can also create an offer with a unique, auto-generated promo code by selecting the Add Offer button and following the prompts.
Finally, you will select information regarding the target audience for your ads. You can select:
Ad Showtime: This schedule details when guests will be shown your ads.
Average Daily Budget: This is the daily amount you want to spend while running your ads. Toast recommends three options based on the campaign goals you set previously, however you can also always select a custom daily budget with a minimum $15 budget spend.
Performance Max (PMax) ads give your business access to the full Google network, so your ads can show up across Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Maps, and Discover. This helps you reach guests wherever they are, whether they are looking for a place to visit on Maps, watching videos on YouTube, or checking their email.
After these options are selected, select Save and Continue. Finally, you will be able to review all details of your new ad, and when ready, you can select Launch Campaign or select Save as paused if you’d like another chance to review it before officially launching to your guests.
Campaign Performance Dashboard
Once you have launched your campaign, you can view your campaign’s performance within the Campaign Performance Dashboard. Here, you can view the following information about your ads:
Ad Spend: This details how much money you’ve spent to run your campaign. This does not include Toast fees.
Sales from Ad: This details how much money in sales has been directly generated by users clicking your ad.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): This details revenue generated from online, catering, and estimated on-site orders per dollar spent on your ad campaign.
Impressions: This details the number of times your ad was seen.
Clicks: This details the number of times a guest clicked on your ad.
Ad Status: This details if the ad you are viewing is currently running or paused.
Cost per conversion: Average ad cost per newly converted guest.
Order Volume from Ad: Total number of orders generated from online, catering, and estimated on-site orders connected to your ad.
You can review further metrics on any ad you are running by simply selecting the ad from your list. You can also edit any campaign details you wish from this page.
You will see details about your ad performance related to online ordering, catering, and estimated in-store impact. This estimate is generated by using Store Visits by Google which reviews the number of people who saw the ad and visited your location.
For those looking for more advanced metrics, simply select the Advanced Metrics toggle at the top of your Metrics Overview tab in the Campaign Performance Dashboard.
Advanced Metrics include:
Impressions: This details the number of times your ad was seen.
Clicks: This details the number of times a guest clicked on your ad.
Cost per click (CPC): This details total ad spend divided by number of clicks on your ad to create an average cost per click.
Click-through rate (CTR): This details how often someone clicked on your ad.
Google Maps metrics such as:
“Order” Clicks: This details the number of times someone clicked on the Order button for your restaurant in Google Maps after viewing your ad.
Website visits: This details the number of times someone visited your website through Google Maps after viewing your ad.
Store visits: This number fluctuates due to Google reporting; however this is an estimate of how many times someone visited your store after viewing your ad.
Direction views: This details the number of times someone viewed directions to your restaurant through Google Maps after viewing your ad.
Calls: This details how many times someone called your restaurant through Google Maps after viewing your ad.
Menu Views: This details how many times someone viewed your menu through Google Maps after viewing your ad.
Other actions: This number details any other actions taken by your potential guest in Google Maps after viewing your ad such as saving your restaurant, or sharing a link with someone.
Note: Meta ads reporting metrics are consolidated into one view showing overall return based on aggregate sales. There is no Advanced toggle as seen with Google campaigns. For Meta campaigns, we cannot break out ROAS by channel (online vs. on-premise). Sales and return metrics may not appear because the campaign is still ramping up and has not yet generated attributed sales.
Additional Resources