TL;DR: You can now have a web application integrated with Google Ads in just a few minutes!
Google Ads is an online advertising platform where advertisers can create and manage their Google marketing campaigns. The
Google Ads API is the modern programmatic interface to Google Ads and the next generation of the AdWords API. It enables developers to interact directly with the Google Ads platform, vastly increasing the efficiency of managing large or complex Google Ads accounts and campaigns.
A typical use case is when a company wants to offer Google ads natively on their platform to their users. For example, customers who have an online store with Shopify can promote their business using Google ads, with just a few clicks and without needing to go to the Google Ads platform. They’re able to do it directly on Shopify’s platform—the Google Ads API makes this possible.
Demo App
Francisco Blasco, Strategic Technical Solutions Manager at Google, designed and built an open source web application that is integrated with Google Ads and Business Profile (aka Google My Business).
Anyone can use the app, called
Fran Ads, to save significant time on product development. Just follow the simple installation steps in the README files (
frontend README file and
backend README file) on the GitHub repo! The app uses React for the
frontend, and Django for the
backend; two of the most popular web frameworks.
App's Logo
Check out a product demo here! You can have this app running in your local machine in a few minutes. To learn how, check out the
video tutorial.
Blasco acts as an external Product Manager for Google’s strategic partners, driving the entire product development lifecycle. He created this project to help Google’s partners and businesses seeking to offer Google Ads to their users.
The goal is to accelerate the Google Ads integration process and decrease associated development costs. Some companies are using Fran Ads to see what an integration looks like, while others are using the
technical guide to learn how to start using the Google Ads API.
In general, companies can use Fran Ads as an SDK to begin working with elements within the Google Ads API, and serve as a guidance system for integrating with Google. This project will minimize the number of times the wheel needs to be reinvented, accelerating innovation and facilitating adoption. Developers can clone the code repositories, follow the steps, and have a web app integrated with Google Ads in just a few minutes. They can adapt and build on top of this project, or they can just use the functions they need for the features they want to develop.
App Architecture
Furthermore, you will learn how to create credentials to consume Google APIs; specifically, the README files show how to create a project on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and how to set it up correctly so a web app can consume Google Ads API and Business Profile APIs.
Also, you will learn how refresh tokens work for Google APIs, and how to manage them for your web application.
Francisco wrote a detailed
technical guide explaining how to build every feature of the app. Some of the most important features are:
1. Create a new Google Ads account
2. Link an existing Google Ads account
3. OAuth authentication & authorization
4. Refresh token management
5. List of Google Ads accounts associated with Google account
6. Reporting on performance for all campaign types
7. Create Smart Campaign (automated ads on Google and across the web)
8. Edit Smart Campaign settings
As you can see from the list above, the app will create Smart Campaigns — a simplified, automated campaign designed for new advertisers and SMBs
Google made public the suggestion services through the Google Ads API. Fran Ads uses those services to recommend keyword themes, headlines & descriptions for the ad, and budget. These recommendations are specific for each advertiser, depending on several factors such as type of business, location, and keyword themes.
An example of three Google recommendations for an advertiser.
The image above shows the final step of creating a Smart Campaign on Fran Ads. In this step, users have to set a daily budget for the campaign. Not only will you receive recommendations for the budget, but an estimate of how many ad clicks you will get per month. This is a great feature for users who are new to digital marketing and aren’t aware of their spending needs.
You can also see an alert message that the budget can be changed anytime, so users can pause spending on the campaign. This is important because many new users, especially SMBs, have doubts about spending on something new. Therefore, it is important to communicate to them that the decision they are making at that moment is not set in stone.
When you start using Fran Ads, you will see there is guidance so users complete the tasks they want.
Guidance on how to complete tasks based on Google’s best practices.
Furthermore, the app is designed based on Google’s best practices. For example, when users are creating a Smart Campaign, in step three (see the above image) they need to select keyword themes (group of keywords). If you choose “bakery” as the keyword theme, your ad is eligible to show when people search for “bakery near me”, “local bakery”, and “cake shop”.
Google’s best practices suggest that advertisers use between seven and ten keyword themes per campaign. Therefore, Fran Ads is designed for users to select up to seven keyword themes. Refer to the image of step three when creating a Smart Campaign on Fran Ads. However, you can set it to ten if you like.
The technical guide also provides:
1. Production-ready code for both the frontend and backend
2. Engineering flow diagrams
3. Best practices
4. High-fidelity mockups
5. App architecture and structure diagrams
6. Workarounds to current bugs on Google Ads API v9
7. Important information on how to handle important tasks necessary for integrating your platform with Google Ads
8. Help with the design strategy for the UX and design elements of the UI.
Important resources
See below the list summarizing the important resources that will help you integrate with Google Ads easier, faster, and better. 3.
Technical guide: 3 sections: ‘Before Starting’, ‘Configurations & Installation’, and ‘Build web
app’. In section 3, you have explanations on how to build all the features of the app.
4.
Product demo: 15-minute demo of Fran Ads showing many core features.
5.
Video tutorial: 17-minute tutorial on how to set up and run Fran Ads.
By Francisco Blasco – Launch, Channel Partners 
Posted by Annum Munir – Product Marketing Manager
