Google Ads Developer Blog: November 2018

Announcing v0_6 of the Google Ads API

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Updated on Nov 30: Added highlight for Billing. Today we’re announcing the beta release of Google Ads API v0_6. This release brings you the features listed in Required Minimum Functionality (RMF). Now that the core functionality of this new API is available, you should get started planning, designing, and coding against it. With this version, you’ll continue pointing to v0 as your endpoint, however, you'll need to update your client libraries. Here are the highlights:

Manager account authentication: If you’re authenticating as a manager account, the manager account you want for authorization must be in the header as login-customer-id. You then set the customer you want to interact with in the request as usual. This tells the API the level of manager account hierarchy you want to authenticate with.
Mix mutate operations: Pass in multiple kinds of operations with GoogleAdsService.Mutate.
Billing: A new service is available to manage billing. The read-only PaymentsAccountService allows you to view a list of all payment accounts. Refer to the BillingSetupService to designate a payment account for a billing setup.
Hotel Ads: We extended the GoogleAdsService to enable users to query hotel performance metrics that were previously available in the Travel Partner API with the HotelPerformanceView. Supported performance metrics are cost, clicks, impressions, and average lead values. Some derived metrics are also precomputed: average position, average cost per click, average cost per thousand impressions, and click-through rate. These metrics can be segmented by:
- Itinerary segments: check-in date, check-in day of week, booking window days, and date selection type
- Hotel segments: hotel center ID, hotel ID, class, city, state, and country
- Date segments: hour, date, day of week, week, month, quarter, and year
- Others: campaign, ad group, ad network, and device
Feeds: Manage and retrieve feeds with AdGroupFeedService, CustomerFeedService, FeedService, CampaignFeedService, and FeedMappingService.
Account management:
- We introduced CustomerClient, which provides the ability to get an expanded hierarchy of customer clients (both direct and indirect) for a given manager customer.
- This release also supports the creation of new customer clients under a manager using the CustomerService.CreateCustomerClient method.
- CustomerService now supports mutates.
Recommendations: Added the DismissRecommendation method to the RecommendationService, making it possible to dismiss the recommendations listed in our guide.
Ad formats: Gmail ads and image ads are now supported.
Search query reporting: The SearchTermView resource is now available, providing metrics aggregated at the search term level. SearchTermView provides functionality similar to the Search Query Performance Report of the AdWords API.
Audiences: Create audiences using UserListService.
Criteria types: You can now create criteria with CriterionType LANGUAGE, CARRIER, USER_LIST, USER_INTEREST and IP_BLOCK.

To get started with the API, review these helpful resources:

The updated client libraries and code examples will be published within the next 2 business days. If you have any questions or need help, please contact us via the forum.

Nadine Sundquist, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

AdWords scripts is now Google Ads scripts

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

With the recent rebrand of AdWords to Google Ads, AdWords scripts has also been renamed to Google Ads scripts. As a result of this change, we have renamed AdWordsApp and MccApp within the scripts themselves to reflect the new naming. Your existing scripts are not affected and will continue to run as they always have.

Going forward, you should use AdsApp instead of AdWordsApp. Similarly, you should use AdsManagerApp instead of MccApp. We are updating all of our documentation, samples, and solutions to reflect these new names.

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

- Mike Cloonan, Google Ads scripts Team

Smart Shopping campaigns are publicly available today

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Smart Shopping campaigns were released in AdWords API v201802 to whitelisted advertisers. Today, we’re releasing them to all developers in both the AdWords API and Google Ads API.

Smart Shopping campaigns combine automation and machine learning to maximize your conversion value across networks based on your budget. For end-to-end instructions in creating Smart Shopping campaigns, ad groups, and ads, visit our docs: AdWords API guide or Google Ads API guide.

For optimal performance, we recommend you have at least 20 conversions over the last 45 days across existing Shopping campaigns before creating a Smart Shopping campaign.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please post them on our forum.

- Thanet Praneenararat, Google Ads API Team

Additional Google Ads scripts workshop event

Friday, November 16, 2018

We had a great turnout at our round of Google Ads scripts workshops over the past few months. We're pleased to announce that due to high demand, we will host one more event in London on December 7, 2018. Please join us for some informative talks and interactive codelabs.

The additional London session will present the same advanced track from the previous set of workshops, which caters to experienced Google Ads scripts users who want to explore advanced scenarios and keep up with the latest developments.

Please visit the event site for full details and to register for this additional session.

We hope to see you there!

- Mike Cloonan, Google Ads Scripts Team

Update to Customer Match Requirements

Friday, November 16, 2018

We announced an update to Customer Match requirements in October 2018 that affects member uploads and the usage of Customer Match for campaigns on Search, YouTube, and Gmail.

Creating a CrmBasedUserList through AdWordsUserListService now requires whitelisting. If the account is not whitelisted, your request returns an ADVERTISER_NOT_WHITELISTED_FOR_USING_UPLOADED_DATA error.
Uploading members to a CrmBasedUserList results in a CAN_NOT_MUTATE_SENSITIVE_USERLIST error if the account is not whitelisted.
Targeting CrmBasedUserLists in accounts that are not whitelisted using CampaignCriterionService or AdGroupCriterionService results in an INVALID_ID error.
Serving campaigns can be affected if they are using Customer Match and the account is not whitelisted. If a campaign is only targeting Customer Match, then the campaign stops serving. If the campaign has other audiences, then the campaign continues to serve with the other audiences.

Please see the requirements for whitelist eligibility. To apply for the whitelist, reach out to your account manager. Once whitelisted, Customer Match no longer results in errors and serves normally without any further changes needed.

If you have questions, please reach out to us on the AdWords API forum.

Nadine Sundquist, AdWords API Team

Announcing v201811 of the Google Ad Manager API

Thursday, November 15, 2018

We're happy to announce that v201811 of the Google Ad Manager API is available starting today. This version brings support for date range targeting which affords the same functionality as blackout periods in the UI. It also removes the deprecated ContentMetadataKeyHierarchyService. For video targeting, use ContentBundles or key-values mapped from content metadata.

For a full list of API changes in v201811, see the release notes.

For questions about this or any other API changes, reach out to us on the Ad Manager API forum.

- Chris Seeley, Ad Manager API Team

Top metrics, absolute top metrics, and average position in the AdWords API and Google Ads scripts

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

What's new
Starting November 12, 2018, the fields below will be available in AdWords API and Google Ads scripts reports.

Absolute top metrics:

AbsoluteTopImpressionPercentage
SearchAbsoluteTopImpressionShare
SearchBudgetLostAbsoluteTopImpressionShare
SearchRankLostAbsoluteTopImpressionShare

Top metrics:

TopImpressionPercentage
SearchTopImpressionShare
SearchBudgetLostTopImpressionShare
SearchRankLostTopImpressionShare

AbsoluteTopImpressionPercentage and TopImpressionPercentage are specific indicators of page location. You can use these metrics to determine when and where your impressions are showing above the organic search results.

SearchAbsoluteTopImpressionShare and SearchTopImpressionShare are your share of the eligible top impressions. They are the best indicators of the headroom available to show your ads in more prominent positions. If your goal is to bid on page location, you should use these metrics. Bidding by average position is not recommended since:

Average position doesn't actually describe position on the page but position in the auction.
Sometimes, average position may decrease as bids increase. This happens as higher bids sometimes allow you to enter more competitive auctions lower on the page.

See our post on the New features & announcements page for more details.

What you should do
Whenever you are using AveragePosition as a proxy to bid to a page location, switch to using the new SearchAbsoluteTopImpressionShare or SearchTopImpressionShare metrics in your bidding logic.

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

- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team

DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API v3.0 sunset reminder

Friday, November 2, 2018

DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API v3.0 will be sunset on November 30th, 2018. From this date onwards, all requests made against v3.0 of this API will fail. If you're still actively working with this version, we strongly encourage you to begin migrating to the most current release to avoid an interruption in service.

For most, migrating will be as easy as adopting the latest version of your preferred client library. However, all users are advised to review the release notes to learn about important version differences you may need to be aware of.

If you have questions about this or anything else DCM API related, feel free to reach out to us on our support forum.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

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