Category Archives: Ads Developer Blog

The official blog for information about the AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick and AdMob APIs and SDKs

Sunsetting the KEYWORD_MATCH_TYPE recommendation type

On July 21, 2021, all existing recommendations of the type KEYWORD_MATCH_TYPE will be removed and no new recommendations of this type will be generated anymore.

What's changing?
The KEYWORD_MATCH_TYPE recommendations will no longer be returned by search for all versions of the Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts.

All requests sent to apply or dismiss KEYWORD_MATCH_TYPE recommendations will fail with RequestError.RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND errors for all versions of the Google Ads API.

What do you need to do?
Before July 21, 2021, ensure that the changes described above will not lead to any issues in your code or application.

Then, as soon as you can, remove any references of the field Recommendation.keyword_match_type_recommendation and the type KeywordMatchTypeRecommendation in your code. They will be deprecated and removed in future versions.

If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us through the forum or at [email protected].
Pierrick Voulet, Google Ads API Team

Sunsetting the KEYWORD_MATCH_TYPE recommendation type

On July 21, 2021, all existing recommendations of the type KEYWORD_MATCH_TYPE will be removed and no new recommendations of this type will be generated anymore.

What's changing?
The KEYWORD_MATCH_TYPE recommendations will no longer be returned by search for all versions of the Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts.

All requests sent to apply or dismiss KEYWORD_MATCH_TYPE recommendations will fail with RequestError.RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND errors for all versions of the Google Ads API.

What do you need to do?
Before July 21, 2021, ensure that the changes described above will not lead to any issues in your code or application.

Then, as soon as you can, remove any references of the field Recommendation.keyword_match_type_recommendation and the type KeywordMatchTypeRecommendation in your code. They will be deprecated and removed in future versions.

If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us through the forum or at [email protected].
Pierrick Voulet, Google Ads API Team

Important changes to Google Contact Policy for Merchant Center

Following feedback from our merchants, we are relaxing our contact policy website requirements for merchants. Currently we require merchants to publicly display on their website at least two methods of contact information (such as an email, business address, or phone number).

To give merchants more flexibility in the information they share with customers, beginning August 2, 2021, we will require merchants to provide on their website a minimum of one form of customer-facing contact information, for example:
  • A “contact us” form
  • A link to a social media business profile
  • An email address
  • A phone number
In addition to this change, all new merchants will be required to provide their business address and phone number on creation of their Merchant Center account, as well as for any existing accounts that require a review. This private contact information can be entered manually in the Merchant Center user interface or via Content API for Shopping.

To update the private contact information using Content API for Shopping, provide both the address and phoneNumber fields via the AccountBusinessInformation object (nested under the Account object) using the following methods: Important: Take care when updating existing accounts. Any fields that are not provided to Accounts.update will be deleted from the resource.

Note: If you have made contact information changes to an existing Merchant Center account that has an account-level disapproval, you may need to request an account re-review. See the following article on Understanding account-level enforcement for product data quality violations to find the steps to make the request.
If you require further support implementing this change, please visit the Content API for Shopping forum.
Ian Ballantyne, Content API for Shopping Team

Announcing the Google Ads Query Language Query Validator

Today, we are releasing a Google Ads Query Language (GAQL) Query Validator, so you can validate GAQL queries directly in the browser via the developer documentation site. This new tool is integrated with the Interactive GAQL Query Builder to make for a streamlined workflow.
In order to use the new query validator, either visit the query validator page directly or click the Enter or edit a query button on any resource’s query builder page.



Upon successfully validating a query with the query validator, continue editing the query using the Interactive Query Builder by clicking the Continue Editing in Query Builder button.





The Query Validator will also provide feedback related to errors in invalid queries.




In addition, you can continue manually editing and validating queries built with the query builder in the query validator by clicking the Enter or Edit a Query button after constructing a query with the query builder.





As you get started with the new query validator, please feel free to share feedback by clicking the Send feedback button on the top right of the page.

If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum or at [email protected].
- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Updating Default Reporting Versions in Google Ads Scripts

In the coming weeks, we'll be changing how we update the default reporting version for search and report requests that use the Google Ads Query Language in Google Ads scripts. This will allow you access to new reporting features as they are released, rather than our previous cadence of holding off on new versions for up to a few months. If you are still using AdWords API based reporting in v201809, these changes will not affect you.

We will be updating the default reporting version for Google Ads API-backed reports to use the newest version of the Google Ads API within two weeks of that version's release. So for example, whenever v8 releases, we will be updating the default reporting version for report calls using GAQL, and all search calls, to use v8 within two weeks of that time.

If you think that this may negatively affect your scripts, and you want to pin to a specific version, you can still manually specify a version which will override the default and will not update until you are ready to move on to the next version. If you do this, be on the lookout for when Google Ads API sunsets versions, because that will cause your scripts to fail until you update to a newer version. Here are examples of setting an API version.

For reports:

var report = AdsApp.report(query, {apiVersion: 'v7'});
For search:

var results = AdsApp.search(query, {apiVersion: 'v7'});
As part of this rollout, we will be updating the default (which is currently v5) to v7 shortly after this post. You can find a full list of reporting upgrades made in v6 and v7 on the Google Ads API release notes page.

If you have any questions, please leave a post on our forum so that we can help.
- Mike Cloonan, Google Ads Scripts Team

Announcing v3.5 of the Campaign Manager 360 API

Today we're releasing v3.5 of the Campaign Manager 360 API (previously 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 depreciation period for v3.4, which will sunset on Dec 24, 2021. After this date, any requests made against v3.4 will begin returning errors.

As a reminder, Campaign Manager 360 API v3.3 will sunset on June 30th, 2021. After this date, all requests made to v3.3 of this API will fail. If you're still using this version, you must migrate to the most current release to avoid an interruption in service.

See the migration guide for details. For most, migrating will be as easy as adopting the latest version of your preferred client library. However, all users are advised to review the release notes to learn about important version differences you may need to be aware of.

If you have questions about this or anything else Campaign Manager 360 API related, feel free to reach out to us on our support forum.

Learn More

As with every new version of the Campaign Manager 360 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!

- Ruizhi Liao, CM360 API Team

Live Webinar: Error Handling, Retry, and Timeouts in Google Ads API

The Google Ads API Developer Relations team will be hosting a live webinar covering Error Handling, Retry, and Timeouts, on June 3 at 10 AM EST (2 PM GMT).

Agenda

The webinar will cover the topics below and include code walkthroughs to demonstrate how to perform different actions with the Google Ads API client libraries. We will also host a Q&A at the end with members of the Google Ads Developer Relations and Engineering teams.
  • Types of errors returned by the Google Ads API
  • Catching and deciphering Google Ads API errors
  • Identifying failed operations using partial failure mode
  • Setting HTTP timeouts
  • Best practices for retrying failed requests

Prerequisites

In order to get the most out of this webinar, we suggest you develop a basic understanding of the Google Ads API. To learn more, please visit our API Overview documentation or check out this Google Ads API Overview workshop from 2019. In addition, we strongly recommend that you install and configure one of our client libraries to follow along with the live coding examples.

Reminders

Feel free to add the event to your calendar. In addition, you can set a reminder for the event on YouTube by clicking the “Set reminder” button on the YouTube event page.

We look forward to sharing our knowledge of the Google Ads API with you and answering your questions. If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum or at [email protected].


- Andrew Burke, Google Ads API Team

Live Webinar: Error Handling, Retry, and Timeouts in Google Ads API

The Google Ads API Developer Relations team will be hosting a live webinar covering Error Handling, Retry, and Timeouts, on June 3 at 10 AM EST (2 PM GMT).

Agenda

The webinar will cover the topics below and include code walkthroughs to demonstrate how to perform different actions with the Google Ads API client libraries. We will also host a Q&A at the end with members of the Google Ads Developer Relations and Engineering teams.
  • Types of errors returned by the Google Ads API
  • Catching and deciphering Google Ads API errors
  • Identifying failed operations using partial failure mode
  • Setting HTTP timeouts
  • Best practices for retrying failed requests

Prerequisites

In order to get the most out of this webinar, we suggest you develop a basic understanding of the Google Ads API. To learn more, please visit our API Overview documentation or check out this Google Ads API Overview workshop from 2019. In addition, we strongly recommend that you install and configure one of our client libraries to follow along with the live coding examples.

Reminders

Feel free to add the event to your calendar. In addition, you can set a reminder for the event on YouTube by clicking the “Set reminder” button on the YouTube event page.

We look forward to sharing our knowledge of the Google Ads API with you and answering your questions. If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum or at [email protected].


- Andrew Burke, Google Ads API Team

May 2021 update to Display & Video 360 API v1

Today we’re releasing an update to the Display & Video 360 API which includes the following features:

More detailed information 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.

We also recently published a collection of code samples on GitHub. The samples, available in Python, Java, and PHP, demonstrate how to interact with the Display & Video 360 API using the available client libraries.
If you run into issues or need help with these new features or samples, please contact us using our support contact form.
- Trevor Mulchay, Display & Video 360 API Team

May 2021 update to Display & Video 360 API v1

Today we’re releasing an update to the Display & Video 360 API which includes the following features:

More detailed information 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.

We also recently published a collection of code samples on GitHub. The samples, available in Python, Java, and PHP, demonstrate how to interact with the Display & Video 360 API using the available client libraries.
If you run into issues or need help with these new features or samples, please contact us using our support contact form.
- Trevor Mulchay, Display & Video 360 API Team