Starting on
April 1, 2020, the
Google Ads API will prevent the creation of new
App engagement campaigns for apps in
prohibited categories.
The Google Ads API currently allows you to create App engagement campaigns for any category of app. But if an app from a prohibited category is chosen, those campaigns are prohibited from serving ads. This can lead to confusion among advertisers.
Enabling the API to validate that such campaigns are indeed eligible to serve before their creation will allow developers to take corrective action early on and also ensure client accounts are able to serve their intended ads.
Change details
App engagement campaigns are identified in the API as
campaign objects with the following properties.
Once this change goes into effect, API calls to create campaigns of the above type will fail if the campaign’s
app_campaign_setting.app_id references an app in a prohibited category.
Versions v3 and later of the API will throw a
SENSITIVE_CATEGORY_APP error. Earlier versions of the API will throw a more generic
UNKNOWN error, since the error code is not published in those versions. These errors may surface from the following services and operations.
For instances of error code
CampaignError.UNKNOWN, the
GoogleAdsError’s
details.unpublished_error_code field will indicate, “
CampaignError.SENSITIVE_CATEGORY_APP”.
Implementation and support
If you create App engagement campaigns with the Google Ads API, please add error handling for apps in prohibited categories. In order to leverage the new
SENSITIVE_CATEGORY_APP error, please upgrade to v3 of the Google Ads API first where possible.
If you’re unable to upgrade versions before the change goes into effect, please check for error code
CampaignError.UNKNOWN upon campaign creation, and verify that the error’s
details.unpublished_error_code string matches the error name documented in the previous section, to indicate a prohibited category may be in use.
For more details on implementing support for App campaigns, see our
App Campaigns developer guide for more information. And as always, if you have any questions about this change, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on the
Google Ads API developer forum.
Adam Ohren, Google Ads API Team
