Author Archives: Google Ads Developer Advisor

Try AdWords & Google Ads API Web Navi

Have you ever wanted to see the AdWords API and Google Ads API services or reference pages relevant to the new Google Ads experience web page you’re browsing? Now you can easily do so by using our new Chrome extension, the AdWords & Google Ads API Web Navi!

How does it work?
The tool shows the AdWords API and Google Ads API resources (e.g., guides, service reference pages, report references) related to the web page of the new Google Ads experience you are visiting. Just choose the tab for the API of interest to view the relevant resources.

For example, in the animation below, a user has clicked on the extension’s icon while browsing the Ad groups page of the new Google Ads experience. The extension then shows some relevant resources for the AdWords API, e.g., Objects, Methods, and Services, AdGroupService, and Adgroup Performance Report. When the user clicks on the Google Ads API (Beta) tab, its resources are shown instead.

Below are the screenshots of both tabs:
The AdWords API Resources The Google Ads API Resources


Resources in each tab are divided into sections — Guides, Services, and Reports for the AdWords API, and Guides, Services, and Fields for the Google Ads API.

In each AdWords API and Google Ads API release, we will update the tool to reflect the addition, update, and deletion of resources. Note that for services, the tool always shows the latest version of the API.

If you have any questions or comments, please post on our forum or add your comments directly in the Reviews tab of the extension page.
 - , Google Ads API Team

Announcing v201809 of the AdWords API

Today we’re announcing the release of AdWords API v201809. Here are the highlights:

  • More available text in ads. Several ad types now have additional fields, and an increased character count of 90 characters for descriptions. Check out the release notes for more details.
  • Traffic split in trials. The new trafficSplitType gives you greater control over how traffic is split in your trials.
  • Conversion reporting. The new ConversionAttributionEventType field in the CAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT allows you to segment AllConversions and related metrics by event type (impression or interaction). In addition, the new ConversionAdjustment and ConversionAdjustmentLagBucket fields allow you to determine if conversion adjustments were applied and segment metrics by the number of days between the impression and either conversions or adjustments.

If you’re using v201802 of the AdWords API, please note that it will be sunset on January 30, 2019. We encourage you to skip v201806 and migrate straight to v201809. If you're using v201806, be aware it's now marked deprecated and will be sunset on March 26, 2019.

As with every new version of the AdWords API, please carefully review all changes in the release notes and the v201809 migration guide. The updated client libraries and code examples will be published within the next 48 hours.

If you have any questions or need help with migration, please contact us via the forum. 

- Josh Radcliff on behalf of the AdWords API Team.

Structured Data Files v4.1 now available in the DoubleClick Bid Manager API

Today we're announcing the general availability of Structured Data Files (SDF) v4.1 in the DoubleClick Bid Manager API. Highlights of this release include:

  • Enhanced support for inventory source targeting
  • Renaming changes to better align SDF with the Display & Video 360 UI

All SDF users are encouraged to begin requesting v4.1 files to take advantage of these new features. To do so, simply pass 4.1 as the value of version when calling Sdf.download. For users with workflows that are dependent on older SDF formats, details of the file format changes between versions can be found in the release notes.
 - , DBM API Team

Announcing v0_3 of the Google Ads API

Today we’re announcing the beta release of Google Ads API v0_3. With minor versions like this one, you’ll continue to point to v0 as your endpoint, but you will need to update your client libraries to use the new features. Here are the highlights:

  • Campaigns. We’re expanding beyond Search campaigns with keyword targeting to include:
    • Display campaigns
    • Campaign groups
    • Ad schedules
    • Campaign shared sets
    • Shared sets for keyword criteria
    • Campaign bid modifiers for interaction types.
    • Ad group bid modifiers.
  • Queries. GoogleAdsService.search provides the ability to filter by resource name.
  • Creatives. For ad disapproval error handling, PolicyFindingDetails replaces PolicyViolationDetails for expanded text ads.
  • Hotel Ads. Hotel ads, first introduced in v0_1, is a whitelisted feature with an ad type that is created automatically by the system based on your provided hotel listings and prices. To learn more about the hotel ads migration and what’s next, check out our recent webinar:
  • Recommendations. Recommendations provide customized suggestions to help increase your campaigns' performance. In the v0_3 release, we’ve added new recommendation types to the API and a new “dismissed” field.
    • Five new recommendation types are available in the API:
      • Bidding with Maximize conversions
      • Bidding with Enhanced CPC
      • Bidding with Maximize clicks
      • Expand your reach with Google Search partners
      • Use optimized ad rotation
    • Added “Dismissed” field to search, retrieve, or apply dismissed recommendations.
  • Shopping. Smart Shopping Campaigns combine standard Shopping and Display remarketing campaigns, and use automated bidding and ad placement to promote your products and business across networks.
  • This release of Google Ads API supports the creation of Smart Shopping Campaigns, which can be used with Maximize Conversion Value bidding strategies. Product offers can be subdivided into groups using the ListingGroupInfo criterion, which currently supports the following dimension types: Product Condition, Product Type, Listing Brand, Custom Attribute (L0-4).
  • Access to Smart Shopping campaigns is currently only available to whitelisted developers.
  • Python client library. We’ve now also released a Python client library. In the v0 and v0_2 releases, we released Java, C#, Ruby, and PHP client libraries. 
To get started with the API, our team has put together these resources:

If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.

Nadine Sundquist, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

More changes to issue reporting in the Content API for Shopping

What's changed?
There are three major changes being announced in this post: Aggregated product statistics in Accountstatuses
The number of products in a given account can now be retrieved directly from Accountstatuses. Like the Merchant Center, you can retrieve the following aggregated statistics: active products, expiring products, disapproved products, and pending products. These statistics are given separately for each combination of destination, channel, and target country. For example: 

"products": [{
  "country": "US",
  "destination": "Shopping",
  "channel": "online",
  "statistics": {
    "active": "1542",
    "expiring": "14",
    "disapproved": "152",
    "pending": "743"
  },
  ...
}]
Here, there are 1542 active products that target the USA that can be used in online Shopping campaigns, 14 active but expiring products, 152 disapproved products, and 743 pending products.

Product-level issues in Accountstatuses
In addition to the new product statistics, the "products" field also contains an itemLevelIssues field similar to the itemLevelIssues field added to Productstatuses earlier this year. Using the contents of this field, you can now see explicitly whether a given issue is impacting the servability of a product and whether the issue needs your attention or just further processing on Google's part.

Human-readable descriptions in itemLevelIssues
In both Productstatuses and Accountstatuses, the objects in the itemLevelIssues field now have some additional fields, which contain English descriptions and helpful links for issues that are suitable for surfacing to clients. The following fields have been added:
  • description contains a short English description of the issue.
  • detail contains a detailed English description of the issue.
  • documentation contains a URL for a web page that can help resolve the issue.
Here is an example itemLevelIssues object that includes these fields: 

{
  "attributeName": "image link",
  "code": "image_link_pending_crawl",
  "description": "Image not retrieved (crawl pending)",
  "destination": "Shopping",
  "detail": "Wait for the product image to be crawled (up to 3 days)",
  "documentation": "https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160640",
  "resolution": "pending_processing",
  "servability": "disapproved"
}
What do you need to do?
Now that the human-readable information is available for itemLevelIssues in both systems, we now consider the old dataQualityIssues fields deprecated. We will no longer include them in Productstatus or Accountstatus resources on Dec 1, 2018, therefore you should migrate to the new itemLevelIssues fields as soon as possible.

If you have any questions or feedback about this change, or any other questions about the Content API for Shopping, please let us know on the forum.
 - , Content API for Shopping Team

Upcoming changes to DBM API reporting

The week of September 17, 2018, a number of DoubleClick Bid Manager API reporting dimensions and metrics will be renamed. This renaming will modify both API names and column header names in generated report files. These changes are being made to more closely align API field names with their UI counterparts after the recent launch of the Google Display & Video 360 brand. The changes are as follows:


Dimensions

Old API name Old column header New API name New column header
FILTER_ACTIVITY_ID
Conversion Pixel DCM ID
FILTER_FLOODLIGHT_ACTIVITY_ID
Floodlight Activity ID
FILTER_FLOODLIGHT_PIXEL_ID
Conversion Pixel ID
FILTER_DV360_ACTIVITY_ID
DV360 Activity ID
FILTER_MOBILE_DEVICE_MAKE
Mobile Make
FILTER_DEVICE_MAKE
Device Make
FILTER_MOBILE_DEVICE_MAKE_MODEL
Mobile Make and Model
FILTER_DEVICE_MODEL
Device Model
FILTER_MOBILE_DEVICE_TYPE
Device Type
FILTER_DEVICE_TYPE
Device Type


Metrics


Old API name Old column header New API name New column header
METRIC_POST_CLICK_DFA_REVENUE
DCM Post-Click Revenue
METRIC_CM_POST_CLICK_REVENUE
CM Post-Click Revenue
METRIC_POST_VIEW_DFA_REVENUE
DCM Post-View Revenue
METRIC_CM_POST_VIEW_REVENUE
CM Post-View Revenue
METRIC_PIXEL_LOADS
Pixel Load Count
METRIC_FLOODLIGHT_IMPRESSIONS
Floodlight Impressions

To allow users time to prepare for these changes, the new API names listed above will be made available the week of September 3, 2018. Both old and new API names will be supported until October 1, 2018, at which point the old API names will be disabled. Users are advised to use this transitional period to update workflows impacted by this change, to avoid an interruption in service.

If you have questions regarding these changes, please reach out to your Display & Video 360 account team.

 - , DBM API Team

Announcing v201808 of the Google Ad Manager API

We're happy to announce that v201808 of the Google Ad Manager API is available starting today. This version brings several new forecasting features, including forecast breakdowns by date and targeting. You can also forecast for AMP-only traffic and Proposal Line Items.

For video users, note that the new requestPlatformTargeting field is required when creating video line items.

For a full list of API changes in v201808, see the release notes.

If you're using one of our client libraries, you'll notice they've been updated to reflect our new name, so allow extra time for upgrading. A migration guide for each client library is available on GitHub: For questions about this or any other API changes, reach out to us on the Ad Manager API forums.
 - , DFP API Team

Upcoming changes to mobile placement targets and exclusions

What's changing
Starting September 18, 2018, AdWords API requests that attempt to target or exclude a Placement criterion where the url is exactly adsenseformobileapps.com will fail and result in a CriterionError with reason INVALID_PLACEMENT_URL. You can read more about this change in the Google Ads help center.

What you should do
Modify your application so that it does not add the above Placement criterion via the AdWords API, and review and modify your mobile targeting to achieve your campaign goals. You will no longer be able to exclude all mobile apps from targeting using this Placement criterion, but you can refine your mobile app targeting and exclusions using any of the following criteria: For more details, check out the criteria usage grid that indicates which criterion types can be targeted and excluded at the campaign or ad group level. If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.
- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team

Deprecation of assisted-conversions reporting fields

Starting September 10, 2018, AdWords API and AdWords scripts reports will start returning no values (two dashes) for the following assisted-conversions fields for all API versions: Why are we deprecating these reporting fields?
Often, the last click before a conversion gets all the credit. But along the way, other clicks and impressions might have guided your customers toward that conversion. Previously, assisted-conversions reporting fields were created to give conversions to the clicks and impressions that assisted in such a scenario. However, it’s still not easy to compare those conversion values between campaigns, ad groups, and keywords, as conversion metrics are double-counted and not normalized.

With the advent of attribution models that allow you to assign fractional credits to multiple clicks that contribute to conversions, you can now distribute credits among many clicks in a way that they can be summed up to 1.00. Conversion reporting fields, such as Conversions, AllConversions, and CrossDeviceConversions, are now returned based on the fractional-credit model, so please migrate to those reporting fields instead.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please post on our forum.
 - , Google Ads API Team

Announcing v3.2 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API


Today we're releasing v3.2 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. Highlights of this release include:
Details of these and all other changes are covered in our release notes.

Deprecation and sunset reminder
In accordance with our deprecation schedule, this release marks the beginning of the deprecation period for v3.1, which will sunset on February 28, 2019. After this date, any requests made against v3.1 will begin returning errors.

As a final reminder, API version 2.8 will be sunset on August 31, 2018. To avoid an interruption in service, all users are required to migrate to a newer version before the sunset date.


Learn More
As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the release notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the Get Started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.


Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!


- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team