Google Ads Developer Blog: April 2018

Sunsetting Flash in the IMA SDKs

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

On May 15, 2018, Google will be sunsetting Flash in the IMA SDKs. This change will affect all users of the Flash IMA SDK, and a very small number of users of the HTML5 IMA SDK.

Changes to the Flash SDK

As of May 15, 2018, attempts to load the Flash IMA SDK will fire an AdErrorEvent.AD_ERROR from the AdsLoader. This is a change to the portion of the Flash SDK that is loaded at run time, and therefore will affect all Flash SDK implementations in production. If you've followed our implementation best practices, your handler for this error will play your content video:


private function initAdsLoader():void {
  ...
  adsLoader.addEventListener(AdErrorEvent.AD_ERROR, adsLoadErrorHandler);
}

private function adsLoadErrorHandler(event:AdErrorEvent):void {
  trace("warning", "Ads load error: " + event.error.errorMessage);
  videoPlayer.play();
}

We strongly encourage all publishers still using the Flash SDK to migrate to the HTML5 SDK. As part of this sunset, we will also be removing the Flash SDK documentation from developers.google.com and removing the Flash samples from GitHub.

Changes to the HTML5 SDK

As of May 15, 2018, the HTML5 IMA SDK will stop supporting all Flash ads. This includes linear, non-linear, and companion ads. If your VAST response includes only Flash media files, the IMA SDK will throw error 403 - VAST_LINEAR_ASSET_MISMATCH for linear ads, and error 503 - VAST_NONLINEAR_ASSET_MISMATCH for non-linear ads. Flash companion ads will fail silently. The HTML5 SDK stopped supporting Flash VPAID ads with the deprecation of the Flash IMA SDK last June.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

Join the beta for the new AdWords API

Monday, April 23, 2018

Update (5/16): Typo fix.
Today we’re announcing the beta release of Google Ads API v0. The Google Ads API is the next generation of our current AdWords API, and it can be accessed via gRPC and JSON REST from a variety of client environments. As this API gradually rolls out, it will reach full parity with the current API.

What’s in the beta?
For the beta, you have the ability to manage search campaigns from creation all the way to reporting. By getting in early, you’ll get to:

Integrate newer technologies like gRPC or JSON REST into your product sooner.
Provide feedback when requested on the beta in order to influence the new Google Ads API.
Try out features such as the new Google Ads Query Language that gives more querying flexibility.
Start using the API to query metrics with the accompanying resources and then mutate those resources. For example, you can query all the keywords that have zero impressions and then immediately mutate those keywords to change their bids.

The functionality for Google Ads API v0 includes:

Creating, updating, and removing search campaigns.
Managing campaign budgets.
Managing ad groups in search campaigns.
Managing 5 different kinds of ads in search campaigns.
Setting standard and portfolio bidding strategies.
Setting up targeting using keywords in search campaigns.
Retrieving detailed advertiser information.
Reporting on various metrics for search campaigns.

Please see the release notes for more details.

How do I join the beta?
Anyone with an existing developer token can apply to join this beta by submitting an application. People who join the beta are expected to submit feedback in order to help us make improvements.

Once you are approved, start with the Get Started guide, and get familiar with our other guides. We’ve also created client libraries for Java, C#, and Ruby with examples to help get you started.

Where do I learn more?
To get started with the API, our team has put together resources:

If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.

Nadine Sundquist, on behalf of the AdWords API Team

Content API for Shopping Roundup

Friday, April 20, 2018

There have been some smaller API updates and announcements that we'd like to let you know about!

We've published a new Getting started with Local Inventory Ads guide to walk you through the process of using the new LIA onboarding features in the Content API.
There's a new codelab available on creating and linking AdWords and Merchant Center sub-accounts!
You can now filter results by destination for Productstatuses and Accountstatuses method calls with the new destinations query parameter. If you don't specify a destination, you'll still only get Shopping-related issues, so there is no change to the default functionality.
You can specify holiday shipping cut-offs for shipping services as well. The supported holidays are available via the Shippingsettings.getsupportedholidays method.
You can specify when a particular shipping service is eligible for products. The new services[].eligibility field allows you to specify whether the shipping service applies to products bought via Shopping Actions and/or when bought in some other manner, such as via your own storefront.
We've added a new Datafeeds.fetchnow method to request an immediate fetch of a scheduled feed. Use this method to get feedback on a newly scheduled feed faster than waiting for the first scheduled fetch.

If you have any questions or feedback about these items or any other questions about the Content API for Shopping, please let us know on the forum.

- Stevie Strickland, Content API for Shopping Team

Structured Data Files v4 now available in the DoubleClick Bid Manager API

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Today we're announcing the general availability of Structured Data Files (SDF) v4 in the DoubleClick Bid Manager API. Highlights of this release include support for:

Bid Multipliers
TrueView bumper ads
Enhanced YouTube tracking
Exchange Targeting settings inheritance

Details of these features and all other changes can be found in the release notes.

All SDF users are encouraged to begin requesting v4 files to take advantage of these new features. To do so, simply pass 4 as the value of version when calling Sdf.download. For users with workflows that are dependent on older SDF formats, details of the file format changes between versions can be found in the release notes.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DBM API Team

Improvements to the DFP API documentation

Friday, April 13, 2018

An API is only as good as its documentation, which is why we’re pleased to announce some exciting improvements to the DFP API documentation based on user feedback. We hope these changes will make your workflow a little easier.

Additional information on report entities. We have added documentation for each Dimension, DimensionAttribute, and Column that states its UI name. This mapping from API entity names to UI entity names should make it easier to mimic report queries from the UI. Also, each of these report entities now has a list of compatible report types to help you determine which entities can be used with each other before running a report query.

Filtering report entity tables. There are a large number of Dimensions, DimensionAttributes, and Columns over which you can query a report. Also, as mentioned, we have added even more useful information to these entities. In order to better navigate this large body of documentation, you can now filter these entities on their name or description by entering keywords in the textbox that appears above each table.

Overall DFP documentation search. In addition to the reporting documentation improvements, we have also improved the overall search functionality on the DFP API documentation site. When you type a query into the search bar at the top of each page, the list of suggested results are now pulled only from the latest version, which allows more results to be shown instead of showing the same result across multiple versions.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out to us on our forum.

- Donovan McMurray, DFP API Team

Sunset of DFP API v201705

Monday, April 9, 2018

On Thursday, May 31, 2018, in accordance with the deprecation schedule, v201705 of the DFP API will be sunset. At that time, any requests made to this version will return errors.

If you’re still using this version, now’s the time to upgrade to the latest release and take advantage of new features such as Preferred Deal support, reporting time zone configuration, and reporting currency configuration.

In order to upgrade, check the release notes to identify any breaking changes, grab the latest version of your client library, and update your code.

Significant changes include:

This is not an exhaustive list, so as always, don't hesitate to reach out to us with any questions. To be notified of future deprecations and sunsets, join the DFP API Sunset Announcements group and adjust your notification settings.

- Gabe Rives-Corbett, DFP API Team

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