Tag Archives: reporting

Announcing New Reporting Script for Performance Max

Today, we’re announcing the publishing of a new pre-written Script for reporting on Performance Max campaign performance in Google Ads scripts. This script will report on your conversions and other performance related metrics for your campaigns. The only thing needed to get it running is to copy the source code into your account and schedule the script to run daily.

How can I get started?
Find the script here.

If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum.
David Stevens, Google Ads Scripts Product Manager

Google Ads API Video Roundup

The Google Ads Developers Channel is your video source for release notes, best practices, new feature integrations, code walkthroughs, and video tutorials. Check out some of the recently released and popular videos and playlists below, and remember to subscribe to our channel to stay up to date with the latest video content.

Google Ads API Best Practices - Error Handling and Debugging
In this episode of the Google Ads API Best Practices Series, we discuss how to handle errors that may occur when interacting with the Google Ads API, along with tools that may help you debug your applications, such as logging and the REST interface.
Meet the Team with David Wihl
In this video, David Wihl shares a bit about his role as a Developer Relations Engineer at Google and discusses his work in supporting the Performance Max campaign API integration.

[Live Demo] Building a Google Ads API Web App
Getting started with the Google Ads API? In this 8-episode series, we take a deep dive into developing web apps with the Google Ads API, with a focus on the OAuth flow, by building a multi-tenant app entirely from scratch.

Logging & Monitoring
This miniseries covers the basics of adding logging and monitoring to your Google Ads API integration and then goes into more advanced topics, with a special focus on Cloud tooling. Google Ads Query Language (GAQL)
In this series, we cover everything you need to know about the Google Ads Query Language to make reporting requests against the Google Ads API. We begin with the basics and build in subsequent episodes to cover various nuances of GAQL. We even dive into the various tools available to help you structure your queries. This playlist will equip you with the information you need to know to become a GAQL power user. For additional topics, including Authentication and Authorization and Working with REST, check out the Google Ads API Developer Series.

As always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions via the Google Ads API forum or at [email protected].
- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Important changes to placement reporting for App Campaigns

On January 5, 2022, we removed all App campaign placement data from the following reports:

Google Ads API AdWords API / Google Ads scripts We made this change because the data provided didn’t fully represent the complete view of the placements that help developers monitor brand safety for their advertisers. If you use these reports, see the App Campaigns Brand Safety Placement report in the Google Ads UI.

If you have AdWords API or Google Ads API related questions about this change, please reach out to us on the API forum or at [email protected]. Note: AdWords API developers must migrate to Google Ads API by April 27, 2022

If you have any Google Ads scripts related questions, please reach out to us on the scripts forum.
Ian Ballantyne, Google Ads API Team

Search Terms Report Improvements

With the updates listed below, we're improving the search term reports returned from both the Google Ads API and the AdWords API across all active versions.

Starting Sep 9, 2021, you'll be able to see more queries that meet our privacy standards in the search terms report for Search and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns. This new data will return for all searches on or after February 1st, 2021 when using the following reports and resources:

This update can help you identify more relevant keyword themes, making it easier to optimize your ads, landing pages, and more. Metric totals from search terms reports will now be consistent with other reports, such as campaign, ad group, and ad reports in Google Ads.

As part of our ongoing commitment to privacy, we’re working to make our privacy thresholds consistent across Google. Over the next few months, you’ll see more changes across our other tools–including how we handle historical data. In Google Ads, this means that historical query data in your account that was collected prior to September 1st, 2020 will be available until February 1st, 2022. At that point, any historical queries that no longer meet our current privacy thresholds will be removed from your search terms report.

If you have any questions about this change or any other API feature, please contact us via the forum.


- Cory Liseno, Google Ads API Team

Filtering Non-video Resources from Video Reports in the Google Ads API

Beginning on August 4, 2021, all video-related performance reports will begin filtering out campaigns, ad groups, and ad group ads that are not part of video campaigns (advertising_channel_type = VIDEO). This change will cause performance metrics retrieved from the video resource to change across all supported Google Ads API versions.

If you would like to generate reports that combine metrics from video and non-video resources, you should use the respective resource-specific performance report, for instance: campaign, ad_group, or ad_group_ad.

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

Changes to Hotel Ads pricing buckets in the Google Ads API

On February 23rd, Google Ads API will be changing the way Hotel price buckets returns data by utilizing two new values in the hotel_price_bucket segment. Those new values will be added as enums in v6_1, “Lowest Unique” and “Only partner shown”.

Because there is overlap between the two new values and the existing “Lowest tied” value, after February 23rd developers using API versions earlier than v6_1 will see reports with the “Unknown” value wherever the two new values would be shown. This can result in one or two rows with the “Unknown” value.

Example:
Currently, data for ONLY_PARTER_SHOWN and LOWEST_UNIQUE are not returned, instead data is only shown for LOWEST_TIED.
LOWEST_TIED 12
Once the changes are released on February 23rd, developers on API versions v6_1 and greater will see the two new ONLY_PARTER_SHOWN and LOWEST_UNIQUE values, with the two new price buckets being displayed.
LOWEST_UNIQUE 3
ONLY_PARTER_SHOWN 4
LOWEST_TIED 5
After the changes are released on February 23rd, any developers on API versions lower than v6_1 will see “UNKNOWN” where the new values would have otherwise been shown.
UNKNOWN 3
UNKNOWN 4
LOWEST_TIED 5
If you have any questions about this change or any other API feature, please reach out to your account team directly, or contact us via the forum.
- Cory Liseno, Google Ads API Team

Live Webinar: Intro to Reporting & the Google Ads Query Language

The Google Ads API Developer Relations team will be hosting a live webinar, Intro to Reporting & the Google Ads Query Language, on December 4 at 10 AM EST (3 PM GMT).

Mark your calendar


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 live Q&A at the end.
  • Reporting in the Google Ads API vs. the AdWords API
  • Types of search requests you can perform with the Google Ads API
  • The syntax and structure of Google Ads Query Language queries
  • How to discover available fields to construct Google Ads Query Language queries
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, you may find this guide useful to learn about reporting with the Google Ads API, though much of this information will be covered in the webinar.

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

Changes to stats retrieval for Search campaigns with Display Expansion

What’s changing?

We are changing how stats for Search campaigns with Display Expansion (previously known as Search campaigns with Display Select) are reported by the AdWords API, the Google Ads API, and Google Ads scripts.

Starting the week of Feb 17, 2019, we will no longer return display keyword stats for Search campaigns with Display Expansion in

Why is this changing?

Search campaigns with Display Expansion historically used keywords to perform Display Expansion. As we strive to improve targeting for Display Expansion, it is no longer possible to meaningfully and consistently attribute stats to keywords. As a result, this view has been removed from the Google Ads UI. The changes in this announcement aim to create parity between APIs and UI.


What should I do?

Before the sunset date, we recommend switching to alternate reports for fetching stats for Search campaigns with Display Expansion.

If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the Google Ads scripts forum or the AdWords API and Google Ads API forum.
 - Anash P. Oommen, Google Ads API Team

Sunset of the Average Position Metric in AdWords and Google Ads APIs

In the week of September 30, 2019, the average position metric will be sunset. This change was announced this past February in the Google Ads Help Center. The new alternatives were described in this November 2018 blog post. Once the sunset occurs, requests for the average position (AdWords API, Google Ads API) will return NULL values.

In the AdWords API v201809, NULL values are returned as two dashes. In the Google Ads API, NULL values are returned as NullValues.

If you use ValueTrack parameters, we encourage you to remove the ValueTrack parameter {adposition} from your tracking templates. When average position is sunset, the ValueTrack parameter {adposition} will begin returning the empty string.

Note that average position has already been removed from the current beta version of the Google Ads API, but is accessible in the earlier V1_x versions.

In lieu of average position, we recommend you use the new metrics of Impression (Absolute Top) %" and "Impression (Top) %. These are the new metrics:

Absolute Top Metrics
AdWords API Google Ads API
AbsoluteTopImpressionPercentage absolute_top_impression_percentage
SearchAbsoluteTopImpressionShare search_absolute_top_impression_share
SearchBudgetLostAbsoluteTopImpressionShare search_budget_lost_absolute_top_impression_share
SearchRankLostAbsoluteTopImpressionShare search_rank_lost_absolute_top_impression_share


Top Metrics
AdWords API Google Ads API
TopImpressionPercentage top_impression_percentage
SearchTopImpressionShare search_top_impression_share
SearchBudgetLostTopImpressionShare search_budget_lost_top_impression_share
SearchRankLostTopImpressionShare search_rank_lost_top_impression_share


As always, don't hesitate to reach out to us on the developer forum with any questions.
, Google Ads API Team

Sunsetting the creation of target spend field for Maximize Clicks strategies in Google Ads API

On July 31st, 2019 we will begin to sunset the target spend field for Maximize Clicks bidding strategies in the API. This will affect all versions of both the AdWords API and Google Ads API. The following behaviors will be blocked:
  • Populating the target spend field on existing standard and portfolio strategies.
  • Attaching portfolio strategies that have the deprecated field set to campaigns.
Later this year, our systems will start ignoring the target spend field and instead use your daily budget to manage spend. In order to prepare for this change, you should start using your budgets to specify how much you’d like to spend for Maximize Clicks bidding strategies and migrate your campaigns off this field today.

Read on to see how this will affect your API usage.
Affected Target Spend Fields
Google Ads API campaign.target_spend.target_spend_micros
bidding_strategy.target_spend.target_spend_micros
AdWords API Campaign.BiddingStrategyConfiguration.TargetSpendBiddingScheme.spendTarget
SharedBiddingStrategy.TargetSpendBiddingScheme.spendTarget


Change Description
Any mutate operations that set a target spend field for the first time will return an error. You will be able to update a target spend field that currently contain a value, but you cannot set previously empty fields to a new value. Additionally, any operation attaching a bidding strategy to a campaign, where that bidding strategy has a value set for a target spend field, will throw an error. To manage Target Spend on any new campaigns, we recommend using a campaign budget. In each of these disallowed cases an error will be thrown.

Performing any of the disallowed actions above will generate one of the following errors:
  • OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_CONTEXT
  • UNSUPPORTED_FIELD_IS_SET
If you have any questions about this change or any other API feature, please contact us via the forum.
- Cory Liseno, Google Ads API Team