Tag Archives: google_ads

Introducing "Solutions": A New Way to Automate Management of your Google Ads Account

We're excited to announce the launch of "Solutions," a new tool for Google Ads that makes it easier to manage and automate tasks in your account. With Solutions, you can quickly and easily generate reports that show you how your campaigns are performing against your business goals, automate simple management tasks and more.

Solutions is available for free in Google Ads under Tools and includes a number of features that make it easy to customize your reports, including the ability to:

  • Filter your data by campaign, ad group, keyword, or other dimensions
  • Set flexible budgets
  • Manage negative keyword lists throughout your account
  • Sort your data by any metric
  • Export your reports to a variety of formats, including CSV and XLSX

To learn more about Solutions, visit the the Google Ads Help Center.

Benefits of Using Solutions

Solutions offers a number of benefits, including:

  • It's easy to use. Solutions is a simple and straightforward script that can be used by anyone, regardless of their technical expertise.
  • It's customizable. Solutions can be customized to meet your specific automation needs.
  • It's efficient. Solutions can generate reports quickly and easily, saving you time and effort.
  • It's accurate. Solutions uses the Google Ads API to pull data directly from your Google Ads account, ensuring that your reports are accurate and up-to-date.

Developers Site Solution Library

In order to try to provide the best possible experience and to avoid duplication of efforts, we will also be sunsetting our manual solutions library in the coming months.

Get Started with Solutions Today!

Solutions is a powerful tool that can help you get the most out of your Google Ads campaigns. To get started, simply install the solution from the Google Ads Solutions gallery.

- David Stevens, Google Ads API Product Manager

Important information for Performance Max campaigns using page feeds with text asset automation opted out

Note: You can ignore this if you are not using Google Ads Performance Max with page feeds and text asset automation

What’s happened?

In October 2023, as part of Google Ads API v15, we launched the ability to configure your campaign to automatically generate text assets. Assets such as dynamic headlines or descriptions that match your landing page content can be configured by setting the Campaign.AssetAutomationSetting of TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION to be opted-in or opted-out. We also launched the ListingGroupFilterDimension.Webpage dimension to allow Performance Max campaigns to filter URLs from a page feed specified by a CampaignAssetSet linking the campaign to an AssetSet of type PAGE_FEED.

For this feature to work correctly, developers need to provide BOTH the page feed configuration AND set text asset automation to OPTED_IN (which is the default behavior, if you do not specify a Campaign.AssetAutomationSetting of type TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION). We noticed that some developers have included a page feed or a listing group filter for a webpage, but have text asset automation set to OPTED_OUT. Unfortunately this combination will not correctly utilize the page feed for Performance Max campaigns as might be expected.

What is happening today?

Starting Feb 15, 2024, we will begin throwing OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_CONTEXT errors if a Performance Max campaign is created or updated such that it contains the follow incompatible state:

Incompatible state for a Performance Max campaign with a page feed and text asset automation
Campaign.AssetAutomationSetting of type TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION is set to OPTED_OUT AND A CampaignAssetSet linking the campaign to an AssetSet of type PAGE_FEED
OR
An AssetGroupListingGroupFilter with ListingGroupFilterDimension set to Webpage.

We are doing this to let you know that this combination is not valid and won’t serve ads utilizing landing page content as expected.

What happens next?

For those developers who have campaigns in this incompatible state, starting April 15, 2024, we will automatically fix the compatibility by removing CampaignAssetSet resources linking a campaign to an AssetSet of type PAGE_FEED and removing AssetGroupListingGroupFilter resources with ListingGroupFilterDimension set to Webpage only if the Campaign.AssetAutomationSetting of type TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION is set to OPTED_OUT. This fix will match how the campaign is currently serving and no action is required if you would like the campaign to remain in this state. If you would like to utilize the landing page content, then you will need to opt-in to text asset automation.

What do I need to do?

First, confirm that you are using text asset automation and page feed assets or asset group listing filters with webpage dimensions in your Performance Max campaigns. Otherwise, you are not impacted by this change.

To check if your Performance Max campaign is in an incompatible state for page feeds, run the following GAQL queries:

1) Check for page feeds linked to campaigns that have text asset automation opted-out: 

SELECT 
  asset_set.id, 
  asset_set.name, 
  asset_set.resource_name, 
  campaign.id, 
  campaign.name, 
  campaign.resource_name, 
  campaign.asset_automation_settings, 
  campaign_asset_set.status, 
  campaign.status 
FROM campaign_asset_set 
WHERE 
  campaign.advertising_channel_type = 'PERFORMANCE_MAX' 
  AND asset_set.type = 'PAGE_FEED' 
  AND asset_set.status = 'ENABLED' 
  AND campaign_asset_set.status = 'ENABLED' 
  AND campaign.status != 'REMOVED'

You may be impacted if any of the CampaignAssetSet resources, linking a campaign to an AssetSet of type PAGE_FEED, have a campaign_asset_set.status that is set to ENABLED and an item in campaign.asset_automation_settings with TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION set to OPTED_OUT.

2) Check for asset group listing group filters with dimension webpage for campaigns that have text asset automation opted-out: 

SELECT 
  asset_group.id, 
  asset_group.name, 
  asset_group.resource_name, 
  asset_group_listing_group_filter.case_value.webpage.conditions, 
  asset_group_listing_group_filter.id, 
  asset_group_listing_group_filter.resource_name, 
  asset_group_listing_group_filter.listing_source, 
  campaign.id, 
  campaign.name, 
  campaign.resource_name, 
  campaign.asset_automation_settings, 
  campaign.status 
FROM asset_group_listing_group_filter 
WHERE 
  asset_group.status != 'REMOVED' 
  AND campaign.advertising_channel_type = 'PERFORMANCE_MAX' 
  AND asset_group_listing_group_filter.listing_source = 'WEBPAGE' 
  AND campaign.status != 'REMOVED'

You may be impacted if any of the AssetGroupListingGroupFilter resources have a case_value that is a Webpage and an item in campaign.asset_automation_settings with TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION set to OPTED_OUT.

Manually fix the inconsistent state of the campaign

If you would like to manually configure the campaign yourself ahead of the automatic fix, we suggest one of the two options:

Options to manually fix the inconsistent state of a Performance Max campaign
OPTION A) Turn on text asset automation
Set Campaign.AssetAutomationSetting of type TEXT_ASSET_AUTOMATION to OPTED_IN
OPTION B) Remove associated page feed references
Remove BOTH:
The CampaignAssetSet linking the campaign to an AssetSet of type PAGE_FEED AND The AssetGroupListingGroupFilter with ListingGroupFilterDimension set to Webpage.

You will be able to make this change until April 15, 2024, after which option B will be automatically applied to fix the Performance Max campaign. Note that after the automatic fix is applied, the serving state of the campaign won't change from how it is serving today.

How do I get support?

For more details on how to correctly use automatically generated text assets with landing pages, see the automatically created assets section of the Performance Max guide. If you require further support, please reach out to our team via one of our support channels.

Ian Ballantyne, Google Ads API Team

Optimally configure the Attribution Reporting API for ad measurement

Background

Ad-tech providers have historically used third-party cookies for conversion measurement, and for attributing conversions to ad interactions. Conversion measurement is critical for evaluating the performance of ad campaigns and automated bidding strategies. Now, with technology changes and privacy regulations on the rise, traditional ad-measurement systems must change in order to remain effective while protecting user privacy.

Chrome’s Attribution Reporting API (ARA), part of the Privacy Sandbox initiative, offers a new path to conversion measurement after Chrome’s planned third-party cookie deprecation in the second half of 2024, subject to addressing any remaining competition concerns of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Google’s ads teams have made significant investments in learning to use the ARA more effectively, to help advertisers achieve more accurate measurement.

In a previous post, we provided a high-level overview of the approach Google’s ads teams are taking to effectively blend the ARA event-level and aggregate summary reports to maximize accuracy. A key point is that your configuration determines what data you query, and how you query it. It’s crucial for ad-tech providers to effectively configure the ARA for their use cases. Google’s ads teams have found that configuring specific ARA settings can lead to notable accuracy improvements. We encourage other ad-tech providers to integrate with the ARA to retrieve the conversion data they need, and process the ARA's output to help maintain accurate measurement in a post-third-party-cookie world.

The ARA is flexible to support various use cases. Google’s ads teams use this flexibility to configure unique ARA settings for each advertiser. This way, ARA-based measurement adapts to each advertiser’s specific needs. For example, we’ve noticed that when advertisers differ in conversion volume, it’s better to have advertiser-specific configurations related to the granularity of aggregation keys and the maximum observable conversions per ad interaction.

Google’s ads teams’ approach

Here's how Google's ads teams use the ARA to ensure the raw data we receive is as useful as possible for downstream blending. We configure ARA settings as explicit mathematical optimizations by defining objective functions to represent data quality, then choosing settings to optimize those functions. Ad-tech providers can choose their own approach. Google’s ads teams plan to continue sharing insights we learn from our own optimizations with the ad-tech community.

Please see our detailed technical explainer for more information about our approach to ARA configuration.

- Harikesh Nair, Senior Director, Data Science, Ads Measurement

Python Version Support in the Google Ads API Client Library

In June 2023, support for Python 3.7 was deprecated in the Google Ads API Client Library for Python. In Q1 2024, a major version of the library will be released that makes it incompatible with Python 3.7. Library changes related to compatibility with Python 3.7 will be limited to critical security or stability patches.

Google Ads API users who depend on Python 3.7 can continue using version 22.1.0 of the library, which includes API v15 support, until v15 of the is sunset in September 2024. All Python users should upgrade to Python 3.8 or higher as soon as possible.

In the future, Python users should expect that the library will become incompatible with unsupported versions of Python as soon as they reach end-of-life status. When Python 3.8 becomes unsupported in October 2024, a major version of the library will be released that is incompatible with Python 3.8. At least two months before a Python version deprecation, we will publish a blog post to help remind users of the change.

The below resources are available to help users plan ahead for future language support removal: If you have any questions about this change, please file an issue on the client library repository on GitHub.
- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Performance Max: Create Search Themes beta with the Google Ads API

What’s New

The recently announced search themes beta feature for Performance Max campaigns lets you provide Google AI with valuable inputs about your customers and business to further optimize Performance Max campaign serving and placement. Beginning in Google Ads API v15, you can create search themes for Performance Max campaigns with the API.

How It Works

  • Search themes beta lets you indicate queries that you know your customers are looking for. They are optional and are additive to what queries Performance Max would match by using your URLs, assets, and more.
  • You can add up to 25 search themes per asset group.
  • Search themes will respect brand exclusions in Performance Max and account-level negative keywords. You can configure brand exclusions through campaign criteria using the BRAND criterion type. Similarly, account-level negative keywords are configured at a customer level using CustomerNegativeCriterionService and the NegativeKeywordList criteria.
  • Results driven from search themes will bring your customers to the landing pages you’ve indicated with your Final URL expansion, page feeds, or URL settings. Final URL expansions can be enabled or disabled with url_expansion_opt_out.
  • Search themes will have the same prioritization as your phrase match and broad match keywords in your Search campaigns.
  • You’ll be able to see the search categories that your ads matched to, and associated conversion performance, in your search terms insights at both the campaign and account levels with the campaign_search_term_insight and customer_search_term_insight reports. You can also view search term insights for custom date ranges, download your data, and access it using the API.

Implementation Details

In the Google Ads API, a search theme is a type of AssetGroupSignal, which can be attached to Performance Max campaigns at the asset group level. You can add a search theme to an asset group by creating an AssetGroupSignal and populating the

AssetGroupSignal.search_theme with a SearchThemeInfo criterion containing a text string representing your search theme, for example, "activities for children". In addition, you must populate the AssetGroupSignal.asset_group with the resource name of an existing asset group you are targeting.

Here is a Java example for creating a search theme asset group signal: 

// Creates a search theme asset group signal.
AssetGroupSignal assetGroupSignal =
    AssetGroupSignal.newBuilder()
        .setAssetGroup(assetGroupResourceName)
        .setSearchTheme(
            SearchThemeInfo.newBuilder().setText("activities for children").build())
        .build();

You can add multiple asset group signals to a single asset group by creating multiple AssetGroupSignal objects targeting the same asset group. However, each AssetGroupSignal object can only represent a single search theme or audience signal.

Reporting

You can use the asset_group_signal resource to get the search themes present in a Google Ads account. While performance metrics are currently available at the asset group level, they are not available at the asset group signal level.

Here is a GAQL example to retrieve search theme texts for a specific asset group: 

SELECT
  asset_group_signal.search_theme.text
FROM asset_group_signal
WHERE
  asset_group.id = <Asset Group ID>

Policy Exemptions

In v15 of the Google Ads API, we also introduced two new fields to provide additional information about search_theme approval: asset_group_signal.approval_status and asset_group_signal.disapproval_reasons. Search theme text must be approved by Google. The asset_group_signal.approval_status field provides information about the approval status, and if the search theme text is not approved, the asset_group_signal.disapproval_reasons field lists the reasons why.

Here is a GAQL example to retrieve search theme texts with policy review information for a specific asset group: 

SELECT
  asset_group_signal.search_theme.text, 
  asset_group_signal.approval_status, 
  asset_group_signal.disapproval_reasons 
FROM asset_group_signal 
WHERE 
  asset_group.id = <Asset Group ID>

If your search theme text is not approved, and you believe the usage adheres to Google’s policies, you can submit a policy exemption request for the search theme that triggered the policy violation.

For example, if your search theme contains medical terms, and you believe the usage of the terms adheres to Google Ads policies and warrants further review, you can use the AssetGroupSignalOperation.exempt_policy_violation_keys[] field to request a policy exemption.

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. 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.

If you are new to Performance Max Campaigns, you can learn more with our getting started guide. Check out our asset groups and asset group signals guides to learn more.

- Da Yang, Google Ads API Team

Store Sales Direct Uploads Not Supported in the Google Ads API

As of early October 2023, Google no longer supports Store Sales Direct (SSD) as a standalone product, and therefore SSD conversion upload requests to the Google Ads API are also no longer supported.

Users who were previously allowlisted for this feature will now receive a NOT_ON_ALLOWLIST_FOR_STORE_SALES_DIRECT error when attempting to upload SSD conversions. Existing SSD conversions will continue to be available in reports.

The removal of SSD is part of a simplification of the overall Store Sales product. Users who previously relied on SSD should review the Store Sales onboarding guide to understand if they are eligible for ongoing store sales measurement. If eligible, work with your Google Ads account team to update the feature. Please reference our Upload Store Sales Conversions guide, which has been updated to reflect these changes.

If you have any questions about this change, please feel free to contact us through the forum or at [email protected] for additional help.

- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Performance Max: create listing groups using batch processing

What’s New

Starting on October 4, 2023, AssetGroupListingGroupFilters can be created asynchronously using batch processing with the Google Ads API. If you use BatchJobService to create AssetGroupListingGroupFilter entities and other Performance Max resources in a single request, errors in the listing group tree creation will not block the creation of the remaining entities. However, the operations to create a listing group tree will still be atomic. This means that if any operation related to the creation of a listing group tree returns an error, all operations related to that listing group tree will also fail, save a few caveats, which are detailed in this Jobs & listing group filters guide.

This update does not change the behavior of any existing batch jobs that do not include operations that create listing group filters.

Previous Behavior

Prior to October 4, 2023, AssetGroupListingGroupFilters could only be created synchronously using the GoogleAdsService.Mutate or AssetGroupListingGroupFilterService.MutateAssetGroupListingGroupFilters method. Requests using the GoogleAdsService.Mutate method are always atomic when they contain AssetGroupListingGroupFilterOperation operations. This is because partial_failure is not supported for these operations, which means that an error in listing group tree creation would block all other operations in the request. If you tried creating AssetGroupListingGroupFilter entities prior to October 4, 2023 using batch processing, you would receive a MutateError.OPERATION_DOES_NOT_SUPPORT_PARTIAL_FAILURE error.

Change Rationale

Batch processing is a powerful feature in the Google Ads API that allows you to dispatch a set of operations, which may be interdependent, to multiple services without synchronously waiting for the operations to complete. We have made batch processing available for AssetGroupListingGroupFilters in response to your feedback to provide another option for creating listing group trees asynchronously and without blocking other operations in the same request.

Implementation Details

In order to add an AssetGroupListingGroupFilter using a batch job:

  1. Create a MutateOperation containing an AssetGroupListingGroupFilterOperation. This is no different than creating a MutateOperation using the GoogleAdsService.Mutate service.
  2. Add the MutateOperation to the batch job as you would with any other type of operation.

The example below demonstrates the process of adding a single AssetGroupListingGroupFilter to an existing batch job. See the Creating Shopping Listing Groups guide to learn more about creating product partition trees using AssetGroupListingGroupFilter entities. 

// Constructs the AssetGroupListingGroupFilter.
AssetGroupListingGroupFilter listingGroupFilter =
     AssetGroupListingGroupFilter.newBuilder()
         .setAssetGroup(assetGroupResourceName)
         .setType(ListingGroupFilterType.UNIT_INCLUDED)
         .setVertical(ListingGroupFilterVertical.SHOPPING)
         .build();

// Constructs the operation to create the AssetGroupListingGroupFilter.
MutateOperation operation = MutateOperation.newBuilder()
     .setAssetGroupListingGroupFilterOperation(
           AssetGroupListingGroupFilterOperation
      .newBuilder()
      .setCreate(listingGroupFilter))
      .build();

// Sends a request to add the operation to the batch job.
AddBatchJobOperationsResponse response =
    batchJobServiceClient.addBatchJobOperations(
        AddBatchJobOperationsRequest.newBuilder()
            .setResourceName(batchJobResourceName)
            .addMutateOperations(operation)
            .build());

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.

- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Effectively use the Attribution Reporting API for ad measurement

Overview

Historically, ad-tech providers have used third-party cookies (3PC) as a mechanism for conversion measurement, and for attributing conversions to ad interactions. Conversion measurement provides critical ad performance data to advertisers, and helps optimize auction-based bidding strategies.

Currently, the online advertising ecosystem is pivoting towards improved ways to protect user privacy. Chrome’s Attribution Reporting API (ARA), a part of the larger Privacy Sandbox initiative, offers an alternative for measurement after the third-party cookie deprecation in 2024. Ad-tech providers, including Google’s ads platforms, should consider adopting the ARA to maintain high-quality conversion measurement and support the pivot toward user privacy protection.

Google Ads has made significant investments to use the ARA more effectively and to help advertisers achieve more accurate measurement. We encourage other ad-tech providers to integrate with the ARA, configure the integration to retrieve the data they need, and process the ARA's output to help maintain accurate measurement after the planned third-party cookie deprecation in 2024.

Goals of the ARA

The ARA has two goals:

  • Protect users’ cross-site and cross-app identities from ad-tech providers, advertisers, publishers and other entities by using differential privacy techniques, such as aggregation, or adding an element of noise to the data.
  • Provide useful measurement information to ad-tech providers, advertisers, and publishers.

The ARA represents a change to both the format and granularity of conversion data available to ad-tech providers. As a result, ad-tech providers must change their current measurement protocols in order to start leveraging the ARA.

A glimpse into our approach

Ad-tech providers who participate in the Privacy Sandbox initiative receive data from the ARA in two forms: event-level reports and aggregate summary reports. This way, two independent views of the same underlying data are available. We encourage ad-tech providers to configure the reporting settings in the API to optimize for better measurement accuracy without 3PC, as well as improve how these two types of reports can be post-processed and used together.

There are many possible ways to utilize the ARA reports. The methodology that works for an ad-tech provider will ultimately depend on its conversion data and measurement requirements. Google Ads has found that leveraging both report types can help the industry benefit from the strengths of each report.

Google Ads leverages both event types to produce a more complete, ad event-level log. We are committed to sharing our process and engaging with the ecosystem to help our partners and the broader industry transition into a future without third-party cookies.

For more details on how we’re implementing the Attribution Reporting API, please refer to our detailed technical guide.

Harikesh Nair, Director, Data Science, Ads Measurement

Deprecating Python 3.7 Support in the Google Ads Client Library for Python

On June 27, 2023, Python 3.7 will reach end-of-life and will no longer be supported by the Python Software Foundation. Once Python 3.7 officially reaches end-of-life status, it will also no longer be supported by the Google Ads client library for Python.

While this will not change the functionality of the client library, any issues or bugs related to the library's compatibility with Python 3.7 will not be addressed, and any documentation related to Python 3.7 will be removed.

We recommend library users upgrade their systems to Python 3.8 or higher as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about this change, please file an issue on the client library repository.
- Ben Karl, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team