A preview of 2009 AdWords API changes

The AdWords API team has been hard at work on some big improvements for 2009 that we're very excited to bring you. Although we're still working on the details, we wanted to give you a preview so you can plan your programming resources accordingly.

These fundamental changes will offer you some major advantages, as well as improve our API infrastructure:

• New calls features
  
• More operations in a single call: We're changing the way services are constructed so that you'll be able to accomplish more work per call. Specifically, operations will accept a variety of modifiers acting on elements across ad groups. For example, you'll be able to add, update, and delete keywords across ad groups, all within a single call.
• Asynchronous calls: We'll offer asynchronous calls, which will allow you to work with large sets of data faster and more easily. Instead of having to wait for our system to fully complete your request before you can make another one, you'll be able to make another call as soon as the API service confirms that it's received your previous call. No more waiting for large requests to be finished. (Synchronous methods will still be supported as well.)
• Partial failure acceptance: We plan to support partial failure, so large posts aren't rolled back due to a few errors. This allows you to keep moving forward with development and not have to re-do the same posts.
• Lower costs: We plan to directly reduce API units consumed for the new asynchronous methods, and are exploring other ways to improve the value you get from the AdWords API by lowering costs and/or quota use.
• Faster development: Our new codebase will allow us to expose new AdWords features faster, keeping the API more closely in line with the AdWords web interface. This will make it easier for you to keep your applications current and to take advantage of the latest AdWords advancements.

We expect to launch this new API version in the first half of 2009. Since we're introducing more changes than usual, we'll extend the normal sunset period for v13 to at least 6 months after the new version's launch. These new features, and others, are still in development, but we'll be giving you more details as soon as we have them in the new year.

Sincerely,

Doug Raymond
Product Manager, AdWords API

AdWords API Hostnames

Just a friendly heads-up to developers out there: when you send SOAP requests to the Production AdWords API service, you should be connecting to the adwords.google.com hostname. (Requests to the AdWords API Sandbox should be sent to sandbox.google.com.)

If you're using one of our client libraries or generate your own client code using the standard WSDL definitions then you should already be doing the right thing. Your requests will automatically be sent to a URL starting with https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/. Our logs show that the overwhelming majority of incoming traffic falls into this category.

However, if you've gone out of your way to specifically send your traffic to a hostname other than adwords.google.com, or directly to a specific IP address, please note that they'll stop accepting AdWords API traffic in the near future. If you think that you might be sending to a non-standard hostname, then please take the time to remediate your code.