Filtering report data by custom targeting key ID in the DFP API

A lot of our DFP API developers have been asking recently about how to filter report data by custom targeting key ID. Currently the DFP API allows you to filter report data by custom targeting value ID only. Until we have official support for filtering by custom targeting key ID in reports, you can use the CustomTargetingService and the ReportService together to achieve this goal.

Step 1: Use CustomTargetingService to get your keys and values

You will first need to use getCustomTargetingValuesByStatement and filter by the custom targeting keys you’re interested in to obtain all the corresponding values. For example:

    WHERE customTargetingKeyId IN (17, 18, 19)

If you have a lot of keys and values in your network, a better approach is to store these in a local database and do nightly syncs. Use getCustomTargetingKeysByStatement to obtain all the keys in your network, and then iterate through them, calling getCustomTargetingValuesByStatement for each key to obtain their values. Our client libraries all have examples of this. For instance, the Java example can be found in our ads Java client library GitHub repository. This way, you can look up the values associated with a custom targeting key more quickly and not do an additional API call.

Step 2: Use the values in a report query

Once you have the values for the custom targeting key you’re interested in, you can then use the ReportQuery.statement with the PQL IN clause to filter on the CUSTOM_TARGETING_VALUE_ID dimension. For example, say you were interested in filtering on custom targeting key ID of 7777. You look up the values of 7777 in Step 1, which gives you three value IDs: 3211, 88990, 123456. You can then use the IDs to effectively filter your report data by custom targeting key ID 7777.

    WHERE CUSTOM_TARGETING_VALUE_ID IN (3211, 88990, 123456)

However, please be aware that if you have a lot of custom targeting value IDs to filter on, you should batch them by querying for no more than 500 IDs at a time in the PQL IN clause. For example, you will run your report filtering on the first 500 IDs you’ve collected and save that report. Then you will run the same report on the next page of 500 IDs you’ve collected and so on until you have no more IDs. You can then combine the reports locally so that you have all the data for those custom targeting IDs.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to drop us a line on the DFP API forums or Ads Developer Google+ page.

 - , DFP API Team