API Version 6 Now Available

We are happy to announce the release of the AdWords API Version 6 (V6).

V6 introduces three notable changes to the AdWords API: quota reporting by account, weekly aggregate reporting, and editable campaign start dates. This announcement highlights only the major components of the V6 release. For complete details of all V6 changes, please see our Release Notes.

NEW V6 FEATURES

Quota Reporting by Account: You can now retrieve statistics that detail quota usage by client acted upon.

Weekly Aggregate Reporting: You can now retrieve weekly statistics via the Report Center for all report job types.

Editable Campaign Start Dates: You can now specify the Start Date of a campaign.

V5 SUNSET IN JANUARY, 2007

In order to avoid requiring code changes during the busy holiday season, we are extending the standard two month sunset period to approximately four months. Therefore, V5 will be turned off on January 24, 2007. Please make sure that you upgrade to V6 before this date.

As with every new version, we strongly urge you to review the Release Notes section of the Developer’s Guide.

-- Jon Diorio, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Deadline for Registration and Billing Extended

Based on your feedback, we understand that end of quarter processes have made it difficult for some of you to meet the September 15 registration deadline. Therefore, we are extending our deadlines by a few weeks to give you more time to complete the registration and migration process and implement your new Application Tokens.

NEW DEADLINES

Registration – Developers now have until October 9 to complete the registration process, which includes entering developer and application information, accepting the Terms and Conditions, and entering billing information.

Token Implementation – Starting October 16, the AdWords API will no longer accept requests that do not contain an approved Developer Token and Application Token. If you have not completed the registration process by this date, your API access will be suspended until the registration process has been completed and we have had time to review the information.

Billing – Since we are extending the registration and token implementation processes, we are delaying the accrual and billing of AdWords API fees until November. Therefore, starting November 1, all developers will begin accruing API usage fees.

We hope this new timeline helps ensure a smoother transition for many of you. And we’ll post additional updates and reminders as these deadlines draw near.

-- Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

System Maintenance - September 23

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform any API operations during this maintenance period.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Fixed: API Sandbox Bug

We have identified and corrected the sandbox bug reported on August 31.

We apologize again for the inconvenience.

-- Jon Diorio, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Using V4 After October 1st

Several of you have asked if you need to modify your V4 request headers on October 1st, 2006. Therefore, we would like to share the answer with our broader developer community.

If you plan on using V4 on or after October 1, you have two options:

1) Simply leave your headers as they are (using the older “token” header). Given the fact that V4 will be shut down on October 29, we're not requiring developers to modify their code so late in the V4 lifecycle.

2) Go ahead and update your headers to include both “developerToken” and “applicationToken”. While V4 users are not required to do this, the system will still accept these headers.

That said, please be aware that:

• Regardless of how you manage your headers, no V4 requests will be accepted without an approved Developer Token.
• Starting October 1, we will begin charging developers for all operations conducted with their Developer Token (regardless of whether they are using V4 of V5)
• You will need to migrate to V5 soon because V4 will be shut down on October 29.
• Once you migrate to V5, your headers must conform to the new request header format (developerToken + applicationToken).
  

We hope you find this information useful and thank you again for your feedback.

-- Jon Diorio, Senior Product Marketing Manager

Today’s Registration Deadline and Beyond

We hope you have registered your tokens and information in the AdWords API Center. If not, please be aware that your Developer Token may be disabled on October 1st if you do not complete this process by today’s deadline. For instructions on how to register, please see our August 29 post.

Now that registration is coming to a close, we would like to talk more about October 1st.

Quota Management & Billing

All quota consumption will continue to be linked to your Developer Token. However, beginning October 1, per our earlier announcement, all consumption will now be billed at a rate of $0.25/1000 quota units (or local currency equivalent). Periodically, these fees will be charged to your credit card on a threshold-basis, which means that billing will occur when your accrued fees reach specific credit limits. For more information on how and when your credit card will be charged, please review our billing FAQ.

For those of you who also use your credit card to manage AdWords ad spending, please note that the API fees will appear as a separate charge on your credit card. Your API charges will not be included as part of your advertising charges.

The New Application Token

Once the registration process has been completed, you will notice that a new “Application Token” listing will appear on your AdWords API Center page.

The Application Token uniquely identifies the application that is making requests to the AdWords API. Its purpose is solely to identify the application issuing API calls so we can better anticipate and forecast resource demand (billing is not linked to the Application Token). You will need a different Application Token for each AdWords API client that you develop. To request additional tokens, simply click the "add" link in the "Your Application Tokens" section of the AdWords API Center. Finally, please note that Application Tokens should be hard-coded into their specific applications, even if those applications are designed for broad distribution/sale.

Request Header Changes

The introduction of the new Application Token requires developers to change two elements (developerToken and applicationToken) in their request headers by October 1. These changes should be made as soon as possible. Prior to October 1, the API will accept unapproved Application Tokens (so you can add them in now), but starting October 1 the system will only allow requests made with approved Application Tokens. You will be notified of token approvals via your AdWords API Center.

Again, please make sure you complete your registration by end of day today so we have time to review and approve your information before October 1st.

-- Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

AdWords API Concurrency Policy

We’ve recently received several inquiries about our policy on concurrent connections, so we thought it would be a good time (especially with the holiday season approaching) to provide some more visibility into how we manage concurrent requests.

When we launched the AdWords API in early 2005, one of our goals was to minimize the number of API-specific policies and restrictions. Therefore, we decided not to set a fixed limit on the number of concurrent requests, and instead instituted a dynamic concurrency limit that takes effect only when total network resources fall below a certain threshold. We planned the system to operate in this way so we could provide developers maximum flexibility/scalability while still ensuring that enough network resources are always available to equitably support a broad ecosystem of developers.

To date, this system has worked well. And we’re happy to report that the limit has rarely been triggered. However, we feel it is important to let you know that if you reach this limit, the system will return one of two possible load-related errors. The first is HTTP status code ‘503’ which is accompanied by an HTTP header called "Retry-After" that contains an integer value for the number of seconds the client should wait before retrying the request. The second possible error returned is the AdWords API error code 87 ("This request is attempting to exceed the limit on the maximum number of outstanding requests allowed per developer token)." You can find this second error listed in the AdWords API Developer’s Guide.

If your application can (or already does) issue concurrent requests to the AdWords API, we recommend that you handle these errors in it, so that it gracefully adapts its behavior if the concurrency limit is reached.

We believe that allowing the limit to float provides our developers with maximum flexibility/scalability. However, we may need to implement a more predictable (e.g. fixed) limit should the AdWords API routinely become swamped with unusually large requests.

Finally, as a best practice, we encourage all developers to use list methods whenever possible (e.g. addCreativeList). These methods are the most efficient way to process large data sets.

As always, thank you for your support of the AdWords API.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

REMINDER: API Registration Deadline 9/15

Just a reminder… All AdWords API token-holders will need to register their billing, developer and application information by September 15 in order to ensure that their Developer Tokens are not disabled when the program revisions are launched on October 1, 2006.

For more information on how to register, please read our August 29 post.

-- Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

New Google Advertising Program Terms & Conditions

On August 29th we issued a revision of the Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions that will affect many AdWords accounts within the United States. Since many of you manage US-based accounts via the API, we wanted to call attention to this event as it requires account holders or their managers to physically “click to accept” the new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions.

To be clear... these Terms and Conditions apply to AdWords users (regardless of whether or not they use the API), and are separate and distinct from the changes that we announced to the AdWords API beta Terms and Conditions.

Affected AdWords account holders will have until November 27, 2006 to log in to their accounts and either accept or reject the new Google Advertising Program Terms & Conditions. If an account has not accepted these new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions by this deadline, API access will be blocked until the user accepts.

We recommend that you speak with your advertisers/clients in order to determine who should review and accept/decline these terms.

Account managers (MCC users) can automatically accept these new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions for all affected accounts under their My Client Center by logging into the MCC, navigating to an affected child account, and accepting the Google Advertising Program Terms & Conditions. This action will then instantaneously accept the new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions for all other accounts under that MCC. If you maintain a nested/hierarchical MCC structure, please be sure that you login to your top-most MCC when you accept the changes. This will ensure that all of your sub-accounts will automatically accept the Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions.

Unfortunately, we're unable to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for you. If you have questions or you need legal advice on interpreting the terms, we encourage you to consult counsel to help you understand how these changes may affect you.

Again, please note that in order to ensure uninterrupted access to your accounts, the new Google Advertising Program Terms and Conditions must be accepted before November 27, 2006.

-- Jon Diorio, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Fixed: API Registration Bug

We have identified and corrected the registration process bug we reported on August 31. All developers should now be able to enter their billing information from the AdWords API Center.

We apologize again for the inconvenience.

-- Jon Diorio, Sr. Product Marketing Manager