Author Archives: Google Ads Developer Advisor

Location Auto-migration Complete

What changed?
On 24 July 2023, we announced the auto-migration of location extensions to assets. For the majority of accounts, location extensions were automatically migrated to assets. This change was made to expand the variety of ways in which your location extensions can serve. Accounts with no activity (no impressions, no clicks, and no spend) from July 1, 2023 to January 1, 2024 were not migrated.

How do I know if an account was migrated?
To find the status of an account, use the following fields of the customer resource:
  • bool location_asset_auto_migration_done
  • string location_asset_auto_migration_done_date_time
You will also see an alert in the Google Ads UI if your account has been migrated, and assets will appear under your account.

What do I need to do?
If your location extensions were not migrated, and you want to use location assets, you need to create the location assets via the UI or the API.

For questions about the API, please contact us on the forum.

For questions about the UI, please contact us here.
Bob Hancock, Google Ads API Team

Announcing the Merchant API Beta, the new version of the Content API for Shopping

Today we're announcing the release of the Merchant API Beta. This is the newest version of the Content API for Shopping which comes with exciting new features. The Merchant API is a redesign of the Content API for Shopping which can help you showcase your products with new features, modular design with isolated sub-API updates, and improved alignment with Google's API improvement proposals. We invite you to try out the Merchant API Beta to provide early feedback so we can improve the Merchant API for you.

For more information, we highly recommend reviewing the launch status for Merchant API Beta expectations and see the following sections.

Highlights:
You can find a complete list of features in the release notes in the GRPC/REST reference sections and accompanying compatibility guides, but here are the highlights:
  • Sub APIs with new features at launch: We are excited to announce an initial set of sub apis which comes with new features:
    • Data Sources: Allows multiple API feed creation and management, improved management of supplemental feeds via creation with linking to primary feeds, and support for other shopping feeds such as promotions.
    • Notifications: Receive push notifications for changes to a given account and product data.
    • Products: Unifying Product & ProductStatuses resources to streamline your workflow, new functionality to support inserting products into non API data sources.
    • Inventory: Improved management with the ability to remove in-store or regional inventories for your products.
    • Accounts: New terms of signing (ToS) functionality via the API and accessing account issues with multi-language support.
    • Local Feeds Partnership: For Point-of-sale data providers, more granular inventory management with availability status submissions and feed labels for inventory.
    • Promotions: Simplified promotion statuses with improved details and support for custom promotion attributes for faster iterations on new features.
    • Quota: Additional fields such as version, sub-api, and adjustments visible through the API to manage your quotas more efficiently.
    • Reports: A new NonProductPerformanceView table which provides insights into non-product performance data such as data on links leading to merchants’ homepage.
  • Merchant API is the future. Going forward, we will start launching new features primarily for the Merchant API which will have the newest Merchant Center features. We recommend you start using the Merchant API and would love to hear your feedback to help shape the future.
  • More features are on the way! Today's release contains many new improvements. Currently, there isn’t feature completeness between the Content API and Merchant API. We will have more features upcoming which are based on establishing parity, your feedback, and completely new features such as creation of file feeds with the Data source Merchant API.
Learn more and check out the following resources:
Benji Rothman, on behalf of the Content API for Shopping Team

Instant reports will soon be available using Bid Manager API

In the upcoming months, Display & Video 360 instant reports will be made available using the Bid Manager API. We previously announced the migration of certain report types from Offline Reporting to Instant Reporting.

Once a partner is migrated, they will see the following changes:

  • Instant reports will be included in queries.list responses.
  • Existing Standard, Reach, YouTube, and URA reports will only be available under the Instant Reporting tab in the Display & Video 360 interface under the same query and report IDs.
  • If you use the Display & Video 360 interface to build new reports, you will need to build Standard, Reach, YouTube, and URA reports under the Instant Reporting tab.

This migration will happen by partner throughout the following months, with all reports under a partner migrated at once.

If you have questions about this migration in general, you can contact Display & Video 360 product support using this contact form. If you have questions about how this migration will impact the API, please contact us using our new Bid Manager API Technical support contact form.

- Trevor Mulchay, Bid Manager API Team

June 2024 update to Display & Video 360 API

Today, we’re announcing the June 2024 update to the Display & Video 360 API. This update adds the following:

  • The ability to retrieve and manage keyword targeting assigned at the advertiser level.
  • The optimizationObjective field in the InsertionOrder resource. This field is only writable for allowlisted customers, and will otherwise be set as null.

More details about this update can be found in the Display & Video 360 API release notes. Before using these new features, make sure to update your client library to the latest version.

If you need help with these new features, please contact us using our new Display & Video 360 API Technical support contact form.

- Trevor Mulchay, Display & Video 360 API Team

Batch processing support for Performance Max

What’s New

Starting with Google Ads API v17, BatchJobService supports AssetGroupOperation. With this change you can use batch processing to create and manage entire Performance Max campaigns.

Batch processing is a powerful feature in the Google Ads API that lets you dispatch a set of operations, which might be interdependent, to multiple services without waiting for each operation to complete. Batch processing also provides automatic retries for transient errors, and automatic grouping of operations We have made batch processing available for AssetGroupOperation in response to your feedback to provide another option for working with asset groups asynchronously.

Implementation Details

Using AssetGroupOperation with batch processing for Performance Max campaigns is similar to how you use other operations, with the following special considerations:

When creating asset groups using batch processing, AssetGroupOperation and AssetGroupAssetOperation must be sequential without other operations in between. This is due to how operations are grouped together when processed. You can learn more about the considerations and best practices for using batch processing to create Performance Max campaigns in the Batch processing for Performance Max guide.

Here’s how to create an asset group in a batch job:

  1. Create a MutateOperation containing an AssetGroupOperation. This is no different than creating a MutateOperation using the GoogleAdsService.Mutate service. See the mutating resources guide.
  2. Associate assets with the asset group by creating a MutateOperation containing operations of type AssetGroupAssetOperation for each asset required; the sequential AssetGroupOperation and operations of type AssetGroupAssetOperation must combine to meet applicable minimum asset requirements.
  3. Add the operations of type MutateOperation to the batch job as you would with any other type of operation.
  4. Run the batch job by calling RunBatchJob after adding all operations.

The following resources contain additional information to help you with your integration:

Improving Performance Max integrations Blog Series

This article is part of a series that discusses new and upcoming features that you have been asking for. We’ll cover what’s new and how it differs from the current implementation approach.

Keep an eye out for further updates and improvements on our developer blog, continue providing feedback on Performance Max integrations with the Google Ads API, and as always, contact our team if you need support.

Workshop Reminder

Register today for the Performance Max and the Google Ads API workshop happening on July 17!

- Da Yang, Google Ads API Team

Upcoming Workshop: Performance Max and the Google Ads API

Today, we’re announcing an upcoming developer workshop, Performance Max and the Google Ads API. These virtual sessions will provide you with knowledge, resources, and support to create, manage, and report on Performance Max campaigns in the Google Ads API. The workshop will be presented live in three regions on July 17, 2024.

Regional Workshop Times & Agendas

Hear from Google Ads API experts as we:

  • Tour the core features and business goals available in Performance Max campaigns.
  • Detail key technical pieces of your Performance Max implementation, from setup to reporting.
  • Build a Performance Max interface in an interactive demo.
  • Review best practices for configuring and optimizing your Performance Max campaigns.
  • Discuss Performance Max and AI in an experts panel.

Whether you’re new to Performance Max or looking to expand upon an existing integration, we'll have a variety of sessions to help you achieve your goals and boost your Google Ads account performance with the power of Google AI. We’ll be delivering several talks to discuss what's unique about Performance Max and explain key concepts across experience levels.

Throughout the workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to interact with our team via live Q&A.

Head over to the event site to register and view the full agenda. We look forward to seeing you!

 - Laura Chevalier, Google Ads API Team

Changes to how you contact “Content API for Shopping” Support

What's Happening?

As we continue to improve our support experience, we are making changes to how you contact the Content API for Shopping support team.

What's Changing?

How you contact “Content API for Shopping” Support:

  • Shutting down current support path: Effective June 10, 2024, the support email address (shopping-api-support) and the Developer Forum will no longer accept support questions.
  • New support paths:
    • To reach our “Content API for Shopping” support team, please use our new Contact Us Form: link here
    • To reach our "Comparison Shopping Services API" support team, please use this Contact Us Form: link here
    • Going forward, these will be the only support paths available.

This change will help us better understand user needs and provide quicker solutions. We appreciate your partnership.

In the meantime, please reference the following sites for integration/API information:

Your Content API for Shopping Team

Announcing v17 of the Google Ads API

Today, we’re announcing the v17 release of the Google Ads API. To use some of the v17 features, you will need to upgrade your client libraries and client code. The updated client libraries and code examples will be published next week.

Here are the highlights: Where can I learn more?
The following resources can help you get started: If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum.
 - Thanet Knack Praneenararat, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Deprecation of publisherReviewStatuses field in the Display & Video 360 API

Today we’re deprecating the publisherReviewStatuses field in the Display & Video 360 API Creative resource. The field will sunset on June 26, 2024. After the sunset, publisherReviewStatuses will always contain an empty array in retrieved Creative resources.

We’ve added the upcoming sunset to our list of feature deprecations. To avoid any issues, we recommend that you stop reading the publisherReviewStatuses field from retrieved Creative resources.

If you have questions regarding these changes, please follow the instructions on our support guide or contact us using our contact form.

- Trevor Mulchay, Display & Video 360 API Team

Launching Structured Data Files QA format and v7.1

Today we’re announcing the general availability of the Structured Data Files (SDF) v7.1 and the open beta of our new QA format. Both are available to all Display & Video 360 users.

While in open beta, the QA format might be updated without notice. These updates will be reflected in the documentation. We will announce the QA format release to general availability at a later date.

What’s new in v7.1?

All users can now use SDF v7.1 to upload and download SDFs in the Display & Video 360 UI, and to download SDFs through the Display & Video 360 API.

The update from v7 to v7.1 includes the following changes:

  • Added new TrueView Video Ad settings to the Line Item resource.
  • Renamed three insertion order columns to use “Kpi” instead of “Performance Goal.”
  • Introduced a new objective column to the insertion order resource. This column is currently in beta and only available to participating clients.

Full details on the changes made in v7.1 can be found in our Structured Data Files release notes. If you are currently using SDF v5.5 or v6, follow the instructions on our v7 migration guide first before migrating to v7.1.

What’s the SDF QA format?

The new SDF QA format provides SDFs with human-readable data to make it easier to review Display & Video 360 resource settings in bulk.

All supported SDF versions offer this format through two new file types: Line Item - QA and YouTube Ad Group - QA. These file types provide the same information as standard format files of the same version, and convey a subset of that information using display name values instead of numeric IDs.

SDF QA files are read-only and cannot be uploaded to modify or create Display & Video 360 resources. Currently, QA format files are only available through the Display & Video 360 interface.

We are accepting feedback on the QA format while it is in open beta. To submit feedback, please use the Send Feedback button on the relevant reference documentation page. We will consider suggested updates before releasing the QA format to general availability.

If you run into issues or need help with this new format or version, please follow the instructions on our support guide or contact us using our contact form.

- Trevor Mulchay, Display & Video 360 API Team