More Dynamic Ads with Ad parameters

Tuesday, November 24, 2009


We're excited to announce that a new feature of the v2009 API, called Ad parameters, is now available. Ad parameters enable you to change numeric information (for example: prices, discount percentages, etc.) within your text ad, while keeping the history and statistics associated with the ad.

Here's a hypothetical scenario illustrating how Ad parameters might help you make your ads more specific and appealing:

Let's say that you sell high-end antique tea cups on your website and it is important for you to qualify users before they even click on your ads. After running some tests, you have found that you can attract serious buyers to your website by including a starting price in your ads. You also want to include the number of varieties of tea cups you currently have in stock, to make your ad appear fresh.

You would like to update your ad text via the AdWords API in response to price and availability fluctuations within your inventory system, but you don't want to lose the statistics associated with your ad. Ad parameters can solve this problem for you.

With Ad parameters, you can specify an ad like this:


Notice that you can specify default values for param1 and param2 within the ad text. You need to set dynamic numeric values for param1 and param2 at the keyword level via the AdParamService of the v2009 API.

On a certain day, if your inventory of tea cups starts at $80 with 18 designs in stock, you can set these values for the relevant keywords within your ad group, as follows:

keyword
param1
param2
antique cups
$80
18

A user searching for "antique cups" subsequently will see the following ad:


For more information on using Ad parameters, be sure to check out our Discover v2009 blog post on this topic (coming soon).

Finally, a few notes about this feature:
  • Ad parameters can only be updated via the AdWords API. Updates are not currently supported in AdWords Editor or in the AdWords interface
  • You can specify at most two parameters
  • While the default value of the parameters (specified within the ad text) can be non-numeric, the dynamic value of the parameters (specified via the AdWords API) must always be numeric. Currency symbols are allowed
  • As usual, your ads must comply with our AdWords Advertising Policies
-- Shreyas Doshi, Product Manager, AdWords API