New Account Structure Report Now Available

Based on your feedback, we have developed a new report type designed specifically for API developers --the Account Structure report. This new report type allows you to download all of your account attributes (without statistics) from a single report, saving everyone time and API units.

The Account Structure report is available immediately through the new DefinedReportJob object (introduced in version 11), and can be aggregated at the campaign, ad group, keyword or creative level.

To learn how to create, schedule, and download any and all reports, please see the ReportService section in the AdWords API Developer's Guide.



-- Borana Toska, Product Marketing

AdWords Downtime, November 10th, 10am-2pm

We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday from approximately 10am to 2pm PST. You won't be able to access AdWords or the API during this time frame, but your ads will continue to run as normal.

-Aaron Karp
AdWords API Team

Sandbox Maintenance

We're planning to refresh the Sandbox tomorrow, Wednesday October 31, at 3 p.m. PDT. As a result, it will be unavailable for several hours and all the data will be cleared. You can regenerate your client accounts afterwards by sending any valid request to the Sandbox without a clientEmail.

- Aaron Karp
AdWords API Team

Bug: V11 reports missing some ID columns

Some of you have pointed out a bug in v11 reports causing the omission of certain ID columns.

We apologize for the inconvenience. Our engineers are working to resolve this problem within the next few days. We will let you know as soon as the bug is fixed.

UPDATE

We would like to let you know that this bug has now been fixed.

-- Borana Toska, Product Marketing

New Reports Functionality

Aaron Karp, AdWords API Team

Version 11 of the AdWords API includes a significant overhaul to the way you schedule reports and the data you are able to retrieve. In the reconfigured Report Service, you now have access to most of the report types and columns that are available through the AdWords Report Center, which means more advanced stats and breakdowns than ever before. Going forward, the API should be much more synchronized with the AdWords front end, while offering increased flexibility at the same time.

In v10 and its predecessors, you scheduled a report by creating a job of a certain type (perhaps by specifying the xsi:type attribute) and then adding some basic fields like campaigns and aggregationType. You had little control over the output, and this made scheduling reports through the API less powerful than doing so through the front end.

In v11, there is only one type of report job (the DefinedReportJob) but it is much more flexible. For example, a DefinedReportJob supports multiple aggregation types, allowing you to tally your metrics more effectively. You can also filter based on campaign, adgroup, and keyword statuses, or by keyword text, keeping your reports slim and precise.

When you schedule a report in v11, you always start with DefinedReportJob as the job type, and then specify one of seven report types (Account, Ad, Ad Group, Campaign, Keyword, Reach and Frequency, or Url) in the selectedReportType child element. Next, mix in v11's biggest strength: custom columns for any report type using the selectedColumns element. For a complete list of columns matching the different report types, see Report Rules.

Why is this better than custom reports in v10? Primarily, it gives you access to report columns that weren't available before. Also, we've hooked you directly into the AdWords reports system, which means that as new columns and report types are rolled out, they'll be available in the API much more quickly.

Here's an example of scheduling a keyword report in v11. Much of it is similar to v10, so I've highlighted the differences.

<header>
  <email>test+mcc@google.com</email>
  <password>myPassword</password>
  <developerToken>abcdefg1234567890</developerToken>
  <applicationToken>1234567890abcdefg</applicationToken>
  <useragent>Testing new report service</useragent>
</header>
<body>
  <scheduleReportJob xmlns='https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/v11'>
    <job xsi:type='DefinedReportJob'>
      <name>Test Report1</name>
      <startDay>2007-09-01</startDay>
      <endDay>2007-09-30</endDay>
      <campaignStatuses>Active</campaignStatuses>
      <campaignStatuses>Paused</campaignStatuses>
      <aggregationTypes>Summary</aggregationTypes>
      <includeZeroImpression>true</includeZeroImpression>
      <selectedReportType>Keyword</selectedReportType>
      <selectedColumns>Campaign</selectedColumns>
      <selectedColumns>AdGroup</selectedColumns>
      <selectedColumns>Keyword</selectedColumns>
      <selectedColumns>KeywordStatus</selectedColumns>
      <selectedColumns>Impressions</selectedColumns>
      <selectedColumns>Clicks</selectedColumns>
      <selectedColumns>AveragePosition</selectedColumns>
    </job>
  </scheduleReportJob>
</body>

Objects omitted above, like language and geotargeting, haven't changed.

It's also important to know that not all column types (selectedColumns) are compatible with all report types (selectedReportType) and with one another. Prior to scheduling a job, make sure to test it with the validateReportJob method: scheduling an invalid report will cost 1000 API units, but validating only costs 1.

We know that reports are a vital part of your business, and hope you find the modifications we've made useful. We're eager to hear your feedback, so if you have any questions or requests, please post them on the AdWords API Forum where we'll be happy to address them.

AdWords Downtime, October 20th

We've rescheduled this month's system maintenance for Saturday from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT. You won't be able to access AdWords or the API specifically during this period, but your ads will continue to run as normal.

— Brian Kennish, Developer Programs Engineer

API Version 11 Now Available

We are happy to announce the release of the AdWords API Version 11 (V11).

V11 introduces several changes to the AdWords API. Below, you'll find the main highlights from this release. For a complete list of V11 changes, please see our release notes.


V11 HIGHLIGHTS

• New, flexible report interface: The report interface has changed in v11 to add flexibility to the reports you can schedule. By no longer providing a specific ReportJob object for each report type, the new interface can now expose report updates without requiring a new version release of the API. The new, generalized DefinedReportJob object lets you create a custom report by choosing a report type, aggregation types, and a set of columns.

• New report type: Version 11 exposes the reach and frequency performance reports.

PLEASE NOTE…

CustomReportJob has been removed from v11 and replaced by the new, generalized DefinedReportJob, which is more powerful and flexible as it lets you create a custom report by choosing a report type, aggregation types, and a set of columns.


V10 SUNSET IN FEBRUARY 2008

Per our versioning policy, V10 will be supported for four months from today, after which time it will be turned off. Therefore, please make sure that you upgrade to V11 before February 18, 2008.

As with every new version of the AdWords API, we strongly encourage you to review the Release Notes section of the Developer’s Guide to learn more about this version.



UPDATE as of Oct 18, 2007

We apologize for the delay in making v11 available. We just implemented a patch that corrected the issue. You should now be able to access the API. Thank you for your patience.



-- Borana Toska, Product Marketing

AdWords Downtime, October 13th

We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT. You won't be able to access AdWords or the API specifically during this period, but your ads will continue to run as normal.

Update: tomorrow's AdWords maintenance has been canceled and will likely happen next Saturday instead.

— Brian Kennish, Developer Programs Engineer

AdWords Downtime - Saturday, September 8th, 10am - 2pm PST

We'll be performing routine system maintenance this Saturday from
approximately 10am to 2pm PST. You won't be able to access
AdWords or the API during this time, but your ads will continue to run as
normal.

-Aaron Karp
AdWords API Team

Sandbox Maintenance, August 31

We're planning to refresh the Sandbox this Friday at 4 p.m. PDT. As a result, it will be unavailable for several hours and all the data will be cleared. You can regenerate your client accounts afterwards by sending any valid request to the Sandbox without a clientEmail header block.

-- Aaron Karp

V11 Release Delayed

Due to some technical issues, we’ve decided to delay the release of v11 (originally planned for this week) for a few more weeks. While we could release some components of v11 now, we feel it is better to delay the entire release in order to minimize the number of versions we launch in a year.

However, please note that v9 will still be sunset on September 10, 2007. Therefore, please make sure you have upgraded your applications to v10 by this date.

-- Jon Diorio

CANCELED: August 25 System Maintenance

Late last night our engineers were able to implement the upgrades that were originally scheduled for this Saturday’s maintenance period. Therefore, we have canceled this weekend’s system maintenance. All systems will remain operational and available.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Unscheduled AdWords Maintenance – August 25

We will be performing unscheduled AdWords maintenance from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. PT on Saturday, August 25, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

*** Update as of August 23 at 9am PT ***

This maintenance period has been CANCELED

Late last night our engineers were able to implement the upgrades that were originally scheduled for this Saturday’s maintenance period. All systems will remain operational and available.

New Rate Sheet Reductions

Over the past few weeks we have tested and implemented server enhancements that enable us to drive greater efficiencies from some of our more costly operations. Therefore, we are happy to announce the following rate sheet reductions:

• addAds = 125 units (formerly 250)
• addCriteria = 25 units (formerly 50)

These changes will take effect immediately.

And as always, we encourage all developers to use list methods whenever possible (e.g. addCampaignList). They are the most efficient way to process large data sets.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

V9 Sunset Extended to September 10

We plan to release V11 of the AdWords API during the week of August 20. This is the same week we were planning to sunset V9.

Since we understand that some of you may prefer to upgrade directly from V9 to V11, we have decided to delay the v9 sunset by three weeks. Therefore, V9 will now be sunset on September 10.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

AdWords Downtime, August 11th

Posted by Brian Kennish, Support Engineer, Ad* APIs

We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT. You won't be able to access AdWords or the API specifically during this time, but your ads will continue to run as normal.

REMINDER: Version 9 Shutdown on August 20

Just a reminder… per our announcement on April 20, we will shutdown version 9 of the API on August 20.

Please make sure to migrate your applications to version 10 by August 20. You can find more information about these versions (including the release notes) at http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/index.html.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

UPDATE as of Aug 7, 2007
We plan to release V11 of the AdWords API during the week of August 20. Since we understand that some of you may prefer to upgrade directly from V9 to V11, we have decided to delay the v9 sunset by three weeks. Therefore, V9 will now be sunset on September 10.

Sandbox Maintenance, August 1st

Posted by Brian Kennish, Support Engineer, Ad* APIs

We're planning to refresh the Sandbox again tomorrow at 3 p.m. PDT. As a result, it'll be unavailable for several hours and all associated data cleared. You can regenerate your client accounts afterwards by sending any valid request to the Sandbox without a clientEmail header block.

FIXED: Unable to Access Certain Campaigns

The Campaign Access bug we reported earlier today was fixed at approximately 5pm PST.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you, and thank you for your patience.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Bug: Unable to Access Certain Campaigns

On Tuesday, July 24, we released some bug fixes that unfortunately prevented some advertisers from modifying campaigns that leverage the ‘position preference’ and ‘preferred cost bidding’ features. Our engineers diagnosed the issue yesterday and we plan to correct the issue today.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and will notify you as soon as a fix is in place.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing


Symptoms:

• GetAllCampaign requests do not return the campaign IDs of campaigns that have enabled the Position Preference and Preferred Cost Bidding advanced bidding features.
• Attempts to access one of these campaigns prompts a “The API does not support this type of campaign” error code.

AdWords System Maintenance – July 14

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday, July 14, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

-Aaron Karp
AdWords API Team

Creating Local Business Ads with the AdWords API

Posted by Brian Kennish, Support Engineer, Ad* APIs

One of the shiny, new features exposed in v8 of the AdWords API is local business ads. Local business ads aren't your typical ad fare, so we thought we'd properly introduce you to them and how they work with the API.

What Are They?

Local business ads let you reach users looking for products and services locally, like pizza in London. They appear as enhanced text ads and map markers on Google Maps. E.g.:

They also appear as similar text ads on Google search results pages and those across the Google search network. You can advertise businesses with locations in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK. As usual, you only pay for clickthroughs. The AdWords Help Center has more about local business ads themselves.

How Do They Work with the API?

Creating local business ads requires an extra step compared to creating other types of AdWords ads. That's because every local business ad needs to be tied to a Google Maps business listing. With the API, you:

1. Fetch the keys of the businesses you want to promote from Maps.
2. Marshal the keys with your ad content.

Fetching Business Keys from Google Maps

Say you're booking the local business ad shown above. First, if you've registered the business in the Local Business Center (the place to go to update the Google Maps index), you can call getMyBusinesses. If not, you call findBusinesses with some descriptive query terms. The latter invocation in SOAP might read:

<findBusinesses xmlns="https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/v10">
  <name>Domino's Pizza</name>
  <address>89 Charlwood St, London, SW1V 4PB</address>
  <countryCode>GB</countryCode>
</findBusinesses>

Either method should return an array of matching Business objects:

<findBusinessesResponse xmlns="https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/v10">
  <findBusinessesReturn>
    <key>
      vbLhTOxEPjI4LNAw2GLNb9YZZZs=Business!d@A!d@Domino's Pizza!d@020 7834
      2211!d@89 Charlwood St!d@London!d@!n@!d@SW1V
      4PB!d@GB!d@-141199!d@51488094!d@1183705200000!d@
    </key>
    <name>Domino's Pizza</name>
    <phoneNumber>020 7834 2211</phoneNumber>
    <address>89 Charlwood St</address>
    <city>London</city>
    <region xsi:nil="true"/>
    <postalCode>SW1V 4PB</postalCode>
    <countryCode>GB</countryCode>
    <longitude>-141199</longitude>
    <latitude>51488094</latitude>
    <timestamp>1183705200000</timestamp>
  </findBusinessesReturn>
  <findBusinessesReturn>Business</findBusinessesReturn>
  <findBusinessesReturn>Business</findBusinessesReturn>
  <findBusinessesReturn>Business</findBusinessesReturn>
  <findBusinessesReturn>Business</findBusinessesReturn>
</findBusinessesResponse>

You grab the key of the relevant one.

Marshalling Ad Content

Next, you stuff the key (AKA businessKey) and the ad particulars into a LocalBusinessAd and hand it off to addAds:

<addAds xmlns="https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/v10">
  <ad xsi:type="LocalBusinessAd">
    <adGroupId>xsd:int</adGroupId>
    <businessKey>
      vbLhTOxEPjI4LNAw2GLNb9YZZZs=Business!d@A!d@Domino's Pizza!d@020 7834
      2211!d@89 Charlwood St!d@London!d@!n@!d@SW1V
      4PB!d@GB!d@-141199!d@51488094!d@1183705200000!d@
    </businessKey>
    <description1>Choose from our delicious range now</description1>
    <description2>Pre-order or delivered to your door</description2>
    <destinationUrl>http://www.dominos.co.uk/</destinationUrl>
    <displayUrl>www.dominos.co.uk</displayUrl>
    <customIcon>
      <data>xsd:base64Binary</data>
    </customIcon>
    <businessImage>
      <data>xsd:base64Binary</data>
    </businessImage>
  </ad>
</addAds>

Yay! A successful response means your local business ad is ready to be served.

Thanks for taking the time to get to know a little about local business ads with us. Cheers from the Googleplex!

AdWords API Sandbox Maintenance, July 2nd

Posted by Brian Kennish, Support Engineer, Ad* APIs

We're planning to do our regular refresh of the AdWords API Sandbox tomorrow at 3 p.m. PDT. As a result, it'll be unavailable for several hours and all associated data cleared. You can regenerate your client accounts afterwards by sending any valid request to the Sandbox without a clientEmail header block.

REMINDER: Version 8 Shutdown on July 9

Just a reminder… per our announcement on March 15, we will shutdown Version 8 of the API on July 9.

Please make sure to migrate your applications to version 9 or 10 by July 9. You can find more information about these versions (including the release notes) at http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/index.html.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Zero Impression Reporting – Out of Beta

Based on feedback from many of our beta testers, we have made the IncludeZeroImpression field in KeywordReportJob and CustomReportJob accessible to all developers. Previously, this field was restricted to beta testers.

Please note that very large reports that include zero impression rows may fail (indicated by error code 112). If your report fails as a result of enabling this option, try breaking subsequent reports down into smaller queries/reports.

We are working to make this a more scalable solution. However, we (and several of you) felt it was important to expose this feature now despite this issue. We will notify you when scalability enhancements are released.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

AdWords Systems Maintenance – June 9

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday, June 9, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

AdWords Systems Maintenance - May 19

Last weekend’s regularly scheduled AdWords system maintenance was postponed at the last minute. Therefore, we have rescheduled this month’s system maintenance period to occur from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday, May 19, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

We apologize for any inconveniences or confusion this postponement may have caused.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

AdWords Systems Maintenance - May 12

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday, May 12, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

REMINDER: Version 7 Shutdown on May 21

Just a reminder… per our announcement on January 18, we will shutdown Version 7 of the API on May 21.

Please make sure you migrate your applications to Version 8, 9 or 10 by May 21. You can find more information about these versions (including the release notes) at http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/index.html.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

API Version 10 Now Available

We are happy to announce the release of the AdWords API Version 10 (V10).

V10 introduces six changes to the AdWords API. Below, you'll find a few highlights from this release. For a complete list of V10 changes, please see our release notes.

V10 HIGHLIGHTS

• Site Suggestion Service: The new SiteSuggestionService provides operations for getting web site suggestions by category, topics you define, URLs or demographics (currently available in the US only). The suggestions the service returns include the URL of the suggested site, the approximate number of impressions per day, and which types of ads the site accepts (text, image, video).
• Check keyword traffic: A new request checkKeywordTraffic (in TrafficEstimatorService) lets you check a batch of keywords to see whether they will get any traffic.
• Proximity target: You can now target your ads by map coordinates and a surrounding circular area using ProximityTargets.

V9 SUNSET IN AUGUST 2007

Per our versioning policy, V9 will be supported for four months from today, at which time it will be turned off. Therefore, please make sure that you upgrade to V10 before August 20, 2007.

And as a reminder, please remember that we will shutdown V7 on May 21, 2007 and V8 on July 16, 2007.


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

-- Judy Nam, Product Marketing

Sandbox Maintenance - April 20

We will perform our regular refresh of the API Sandbox database on Friday, April 20 at 3 p.m. PDT. As a result, the Sandbox will be unavailable for a few hours.

The database refresh will erase all Sandbox user and account data. Therefore, you will need to first make a request without including a clientEmail header to create your five Sandbox client accounts.

-- Judy Nam, Product Marketing

AdWords System Maintenance - April 14

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday, April 14, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

--Judy Nam, Product Marketing

AdWords API Forum now up and running

The AdWords API Forum is once again up and running. Thanks for your patience while we worked to resolve yesterday's issue.

-- Judy Nam, Product Marketing

Experiencing a problem with the AdWords API Forum

We are currently experiencing a problem with the AdWords API Forum and we're working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Once it's back up and running we will update you via the blog and forum. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

-- Judy Nam, Product Marketing

Sandbox Maintenance - March 23

We will perform our regular refresh of the API Sandbox database on Friday, March 23 at 3 p.m. PDT. As a result, the Sandbox will be unavailable for a few hours.

The database refresh will erase all Sandbox user and account data. Therefore, you will need to first make a request without including a clientEmail header to create your five Sandbox client accounts.

-- Judy Nam, the new "Product Gal"

API Version 9 Now Available

We are happy to announce the release of the AdWords API Version 9 (V9).

V9 introduces four major changes – and a few minor changes – to the AdWords API. This announcement highlights only the major components of the release. For complete details on all V9 changes, please see our Release Notes.

V9 HIGHLIGHTS

• Support for Video Ads: You can now create and manage click-to-play video ads for both keyword- and site-targeted campaigns (video upload not supported via the API)
• Local Time Zone Statistics: Now all calls return statistics in the account's local time zone (we have removed the inPST parameter)
• Batch Check Ads: Before you try to insert or update ads, you can now check a batch of ads for policy errors.

REMOVED CREATIVESERVICE

Per our February 15 post, we have removed the CreativeService from this latest version. Therefore, CreativeService will no longer be available after July 9, 2007 (see sunset info below).

V8 SUNSET IN JULY 2007

Per our versioning policy, V8 will be supported for four months from today, at which time it will be turned off. Therefore, please make sure that you upgrade to V9 before July 9, 2007.

And as a reminder, please remember that we will shutdown V7 on May 21, 2007.

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

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

System Maintenance - March 10

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday, March 10, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

REMINDER: V6 Shutdown on March 12

Just a reminder… per our announcement on November 9, we will shutdown Version 6 of the API on Monday, March 12, 2007.

Please make sure you migrate your applications to Version 7 or 8 by March 12. You can find more information about these versions (including the release notes) at http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/index.html.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Sandbox Maintenance - February 23

We will perform our regular refresh of the API Sandbox database on Friday, February 23. As a result, the Sandbox will be unavailable for a few hours.

As a result of this database refresh, all Sandbox user and account data will be erased. Therefore, you will need to first make a request without including a clientEmail header (call getClientAccounts for example) to create your five Sandbox client accounts.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Pause/Resume Feature Now Available

The Pause/Resume keywords, websites, and creatives feature that was announced as part of the V7 release is now available in the Production API (previously it was a sandbox-only feature) and the AdWords web interface (adwords.google.com). You can find more information about this feature in the AdWords API V7 Release Notes.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Sunsetting CreativeService in July

Some of you may have noticed that our recently V8 release contains a new service called AdService. As we mentioned in our January 18 post, AdService provides improved functionality over our current CreativeService and will eventually replace it. Among other things, AdService provides expanded support for different ad formats (such as Mobile Ads and Local Business Ads) and the new Business data object.

The latest version of the AdWords API (V8) will be the last version to contain CreativeService. Therefore, developers upgrading to V9 will need to migrate from CreativeService to AdService.

Given that we plan to release V9 in March, this means that V8 (and CreativeService) will be sunset four months later in July 2007.

You can find more information about AdService in the V8 Release Notes.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

System Maintenance - February 10

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT on Saturday, February 10, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

V5 Shutdown Period Extended 1 Week

We have extended the V5 shutdown deadline to Friday, February 2, 2007.

Therefore, please make sure you have migrated your applications to Version 6, 7 or 8 by February 2. You can find more information about the latest versions (including the release notes) at http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/developer/index.html.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Manager

FIXED: V8 CampaignService

Thank you for all for your feedback and patience. We updated our v8 CampaignService WSDL to fix a client interoperability issue with nillable fields in the new budget optimizer settings. This is similar to a previous fix we made to help certain toolkits, such as .NET, work with nillable fields properly.

-- Jon Diorio,

Sandbox Maintenance - January 26

We will perform our regular refresh of the API Sandbox database on Friday, January 26 at approximately 3pm US Pacific Time. Therefore, the Sandbox will be unavailable for a few hours.

As a result of this database refresh, all Sandbox user and account data will be erased. Therefore, you will need to first make a request without including a clientEmail header (call getClientAccounts for example) to create your five Sandbox client accounts.

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Java & .NET Libraries Updated to Version 8

Please note, the AdWords API Java and .NET libraries have been updated for Version 8 (V8).

You can always find the latest versions at

• Java: http://code.google.com/p/google-api-adwords-java/
• .NET: http://code.google.com/p/google-api-adwords-dotnet/

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

API Version 8 Now Available

We are happy to announce that the AdWords API Version 8 (V8) – formerly available in the sandbox – is now available in our production environment.

V8 introduces four major changes to the AdWords API. This announcement highlights only the major components of the release. For complete details on all V8 changes, please see our Release Notes.

V8 HIGHLIGHTS

Budget Optimizer Exposed: A new field budgetOptimizerSettings in Campaign allows you to use the Budget Optimizer

The new AdService: Provides improved functionality over CreativeService and will eventually replace it. More specifically, it enables the creation and management of new ad formats such as Local Business Ads and Mobile Ads.

Check Creatives and Criteria: Three new methods to check creatives and criteria

AdWords Terms & Conditions Must Be Accepted: A requirement has been added that all targeted AdWords accounts must have agreed to past and current AdWords Terms & Conditions

Warning: Fields Have Been Re-Ordered

In general, the order of fields in an object constructor may be taken from their order in the WSDL. In v8, the order of many WSDL fields changed and so the order of any generated object constructors may change.

V7 SUNSET IN MAY, 2007

Per our versioning policy, V7 will be supported for four months from today, at which time it will be turned off. Therefore, please make sure that you upgrade to V8 before May 21, 2007.

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

-- Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

System Maintenance - January 13

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. PDT on Saturday, January 13, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to perform API operations during this maintenance period.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

Unscheduled AdWords Maintenance – January 9

We will be performing unscheduled AdWords maintenance from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. US Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, January 9, 2007. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you may not be able to run or retrieve reports, upload image & video ads, or access the AdWords API Sandbox during this maintenance period.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

--Jon Diorio, Product Marketing