Changes to location targeting in Google Ads Search, Shopping, Display, and Performance Max campaigns

Starting on April 14, 2023, there will be changes made to the location targeting settings for Search, Shopping, Display, and Performance Max campaigns in the Google Ads API. We are making this change to simplify the location targeting portfolio and improve advertiser performance. All versions will throw errors if you try to set the location target settings to one of the values shown below.

Campaign.geo_target_type_setting fields
positive_geo_target_type can no longer be set to SEARCH_INTEREST for Search, Shopping, and Display campaigns. The default value is PRESENCE_OR_INTEREST.
negative_geo_target_type can no longer be set to PRESENCE_OR_INTEREST for Performance Max, Search, Shopping, and Display campaigns. The default value is PRESENCE.
The error returned if these values are used is SettingError.SETTING_VALUE_NOT_COMPATIBLE_WITH_CAMPAIGN.

On April 24, 2023, we will start performing any necessary auto-migration of fields to the new default values until no more invalid combinations exist. The auto-migration will occur on a per-campaign basis. You can confirm that the migration is complete for a Google Ads account by checking that these two queries return zero rows.


SELECT campaign.id, campaign.geo_target_type_setting.positive_geo_target_type, campaign.advertising_channel_type FROM campaign WHERE campaign.advertising_channel_type IN ('DISPLAY', 'SEARCH', 'SHOPPING') AND campaign.geo_target_type_setting.positive_geo_target_type = 'SEARCH_INTEREST' LIMIT 1
SELECT campaign.id, campaign.advertising_channel_type, campaign.geo_target_type_setting.negative_geo_target_type FROM campaign WHERE campaign.geo_target_type_setting.negative_geo_target_type = 'PRESENCE_OR_INTEREST' AND campaign.advertising_channel_type IN ('DISPLAY', 'PERFORMANCE_MAX', 'SEARCH', 'SHOPPING') LIMIT 1
Where can I get support?
If you have questions, please reach out to us on the forum or at [email protected].
Nadine Wang, Google Ads API Team