Introducing AdWords API version v201003 beta

Today we’re releasing a new version of the AdWords API: v201003 beta. This version contains many requested features, including: a ReportService beta, Ad Sitelinks, and bid simulator. We know many of you just migrated to v200909, so don’t worry, your v200909 code will continue to work normally – v200909 remains the latest out-of-beta release and is fully supported by our team.

Here’s the full list of what’s new in version v201003 beta:

• ReportService beta: generate reports about the performance of your AdWords campaigns
• Bid simulator: see estimated clicks, cost and impressions corresponding to various Max. CPC bids
• Ad Sitelinks extensions: include up to four additional links in your ads to deeper content on your site
• Phone extensions: add a phone number to your text ads that appear on mobile devices with full Internet browsers such as iPhone and Android ads
• Sync for location extensions: synchronize your AdWords location extensions with Google Places (formerly Local Business Center) listings
• MediaService: upload images and icons for location extensions
• Position preference: specify in what position range you’d like your ads to appear
• Target CPA: bid based on the average amount you’d like pay for a conversion
• Carrier and device targeting: target ads to specific mobile carriers and devices
• Category targeting: show placement targeted ads on a set of placements with the same theme
• 1-per-click and many-per-click conversions: get both types of conversion metrics
• A minimum size for bulk mutate jobs

ReportService is available in beta within v201003, however, TrafficEstimatorService and AccountService are only available within v13. We’ll announce on this blog when all three of these services are fully available within the new AdWords API. You’ll have four months from the date of that announcement to migrate your applications to the new services. You don’t need to migrate to the new ReportService beta at this time, but we encourage you to try it out.

The new AdWords API architecture makes it easier for us to enable new features available in AdWords, so look out for more updates like this one in the coming months. As always, please continue to post your questions and feedback to the developer forum.

–Jason Shafton, Product Marketing Manager

Sandbox Account Viewer Released

The Sandbox Account Viewer is a sample application that demonstrates how to use the AdWords API client library to display contents of an AdWords sandbox account. It can be used to visualize the effects of a request on your account and to retrieve information such as IDs that are needed when running examples. We are sharing this code as open source to provide a starting point for new developers and to demonstrate some of the core functionality in the API.

The Sandbox Account Viewer does not attempt to replicate the official AdWords web interface, but rather displays information exactly as it is returned by the API. The objects in the account are displayed in a tree on the left, and when selected their details are displayed in a table to the right.



To get started, download the source code and open the project in Eclipse or your favorite Java IDE. Read through the README and javadoc comments to understand how the application works and use the Ant task "run" to launch it. We encourage you to modify the code and experiment with new functionality. If you develop a great feature let us know so we can upstream it in to the official source.

If you have Java enabled in your browser you can click here to launch a preview of the application. Bugs, feature requests, or contributions can be filed on the Java client library issue tracker and any questions can be posted to the AdWords API forum.

- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team

AdWords Downtime: May 13th, 6:00pm - 6:30pm PDT

We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Thursday, May 13th from approximately 6:00pm to 6:30pm PDT. You won't be able to access AdWords or the API during this time frame, but your ads will continue to run as normal.

While, AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month, this update was delayed due to the Mother's Day holiday in the U.S. last weekend. We apologize for the late notice.

Best,

- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team

New AdWords ID Data in Google Analytics API

Cross posted from the Google Analytics Blog.

Google Analytics helps marketers measure the performance of their ad campaigns. By linking Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, advertisers get a detailed picture of the performance of their ad creatives and keywords. Manually optimizing campaigns works well for the top 100 or 1000 keywords, but can be a challenge for the 1000+ keywords in the long tail.
To help advertisers, we are releasing 5 new dimensions through the Google Analytics API that correlate to the AdWords API IDs.

• ga:adwordsCustomerID
• ga:adwordsCampaignID
• ga:adwordsAdGroupID
• ga:adwordsCriteriaID
• ga:adwordsCreativeID

This allows advertisers to gain new insight by by combining data from Google Analytics and Google AdWords data sets.

Image of table showing new AdWords IDs

Likewise, clients can increase their efficiency by automating reporting using applications. For example, a developer could write an application that ranks all the ad and keyword combinations by bounce rate for the top 50 landing pages, making it easy to identify which ad creatives could be optimized. Running such a report at night would allow an analyst to spend their day focused on optimizing ad creatives to yield real outcomes.

To help you get started quickly, we wrote an article that walks through the steps of joining data from both sources. We also provided the sample application that produces the table above. Here's a sample Java code snippet that shows exactly how to insert the IDs from Google Analytics into a Google AdWords API filter:

 public AdGroupCriterionIdFilter[] getCriterionFilters(DataFeed
    analyticsData) {

  int numFilters = analyticsData.getEntries().size();
  AdGroupCriterionIdFilter[] critFilters = new
      AdGroupCriterionIdFilter[numFilters];

  for (int i = 0; i < numFilters; i++) {

    DataEntry entry = analyticsData.getEntries().get(i);
    Long groupID =    
       Long.parseLong(entry.stringValueOf("ga:adwordsAdGroupID"));
    Long critID = 
       Long.parseLong(entry.stringValueOf("ga:adwordsCriteriaID"));

    AdGroupCriterionIdFilter critFilter = new AdGroupCriterionIdFilter();
    critFilter.setAdGroupId(groupID);
    critFilter.setCriterionId(critID);
    critFilters[i] = critFilter;
  }
  return critFilters;
}

Please keep in mind that all applications that combine data with the AdWords API must follow the AdWords API terms and conditions.

We're really excited about the new possibilities this data allows. We look forward to hearing how you use it to improve your ad campaigns!

Thanks!
Alex Lucas, Google Analytics API Team

AdWords Downtime: May 8th, 10am-2pm PDT

We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday, May 8th from approximately 10:00am to 2:00pm PDT. You won't be able to access AdWords or the API during this time frame, but your ads will continue to run as normal.

Best,

- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team