Announcing the AdWords Commercial Developer Program

Friday, September 30, 2005


On January 1, 2006, we will launch the new AdWords Commercial Developer Program, an optional program designed to help commercial AdWords developers meet their client and business needs by providing greater API access and support.

This voluntary program will be open to all commercial developers who require more quota units than are provided in their free quota allocations.

Launched at the request of some of our commercial developers, the AdWords Commercial Developer Program is designed to augment the current free quota system by providing greater quota limits to commercial API developers. Therefore, those developers who opt not to join the program can continue to leverage the API as they always have via their free quota allocations.

Starting in early December, a link to a registration page will be posted to the API home page and blog for those who wish to enroll in the program. We will continue to update you as more details become available.

Thank you once again for your feedback and we hope that this new program helps you to develop more innovative solutions that drive greater value for your customers.

--Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

Update to the Quota Rate Sheet

Thursday, September 29, 2005


As one developer recently (and most astutely) noted, the current rate sheet states that setKeywordListMaxCpc and setKeywordListSingleMaxCpc operations consume 10 quota units each, while updateKeyword and updateKeywordList consume 1 quota unit each. Or as he puts it, "why would anybody use setKeywordListMaxCpc at a cost 10 per item when one can accomplish the same thing for only 2 per item using getKeywordList and updateKeywordList?"

Put simply, this was an oversight on our part that we will be correcting shortly.

Starting October 1, 2005, the updateKeyword and updateKeywordList operations will each consume 10 quota units per item.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

Site Targeting & CPM Bidding Functionality Re-Released

Thursday, September 29, 2005


Thank you all for your patience. We have corrected the issue with last week’s release of site targeting and CPM bidding functionality, and have re-released the code.

For more information on these new functions, please review last week’s post or consult the AdWords API Developer’s Guide.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

Affected Keyword Destination URL’s Have Been Restored

Friday, September 23, 2005



This afternoon at 4:30pm PDT we completed a process that restored the affected Keyword Destination URL’s to their original values (specifically, the value they held on September 20 at 4:00pm PDT before the bug was released).

To ensure that we didn’t overwrite any changes you may have made since then, we restored your Keyword Destination URL’s to their original values only if:

  • The Keyword Destination URL was set to null due to the bug, and
  • The Keyword Destination URL was not altered since the field was set to null.

We apologize again for the inconvenience and are working hard to ensure that this type of situation does not happen again.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

Update on Yesterday’s Bug and Disappearing URL’s

Thursday, September 22, 2005


I wanted to update everybody on yesterday’s bug and code roll-back.

From Tuesday, Sept 20th at 4:00pm (PST) to Wednesday, Sept 21st at 11am (PST) all calls to the KeywordService SOAP API methods setKeywordListMaxCpc and setKeywordListSingleMaxCPC resulted in the destination URL being erased for the specified keywords.

Yesterday morning, we rolled back the changes that introduced that bug, so now the service works as expected.

We are working as fast as possible to determine which Keywords were affected by this bug, and for the Keywords in this set that still have a null URL, to restore the URL to the value it had on September 20th at 4pm (PST).

This process ensures that if you fix the data yourself before we do, we will not override your fixes.

While we cannot commit to a timeline given the technical complexities, we hope to complete this correction process by 9/23. We will advise you as soon as we have a better visibility. Again, if you have the ability to repair the keyword destination URL immediately, you can make this update as our correction process will not override your fixes.

Finally, a few people have asked what happens if a keyword destination URL is set to NULL, so I thought I’d share the answer. If a keyword destination URL is set to NULL, the creative destination URL is used instead.

We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

Yesterday’s release has been rolled-back

Wednesday, September 21, 2005


We have identified a bug in yesterday’s release and are working to correct the issue. In the meantime we have rolled-back the latest release so your future operations will not be affected. Once the bug is fixed we will notify you and re-release the code. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

New Support for Site Targeting and CPM Bidding

Tuesday, September 20, 2005


We have exposed new functionality through the API that allows you to take advantage of existing AdWords site targeting and related CPM (cost per thousand) bidding. This new functionality lets advertisers choose individual sites in the Google Content Network where they'd like their ads to appear, and then bid for impressions on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis. To learn more about site-targeted campaigns, please visit the site-targeted campaigns help center.

These new features are implemented in the API by refactoring the KeywordService. In object oriented terminology, a new abstract type Criterion has been created that holds what is common between Keywords and Websites. Criterion has two concrete subclasses: Keyword and Website. The CPM and URL of the targeted site are specified in the new Website structure.

The feature generated three (3) changes to the API:

  • A new CriterionService has been introduced. It defines the Criterion, Keyword and Website types, and operations to manage these two types. This is the service to use if you want to create site targeted campaigns. You can also use it instead of the legacy KeywordService in order to create keyword targeted campaigns. [Please note, while KeywordService is currently still supported, it will be removed in a future release. Therefore, please use CriterionService instead.]
  • KeywordService works as before, but it defines the Criterion type and redefines Keyword as a restriction of Criterion. This will allow backwards compatibility with existing programs using the KeywordService.
  • CampaignService works as before, but defines Criterion in order to be able to define Keyword as a restriction of it.

For more information, please consult the AdWords API Developer’s Guide.

We hope these new features will allow you to create more efficient AdWords campaigns.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

System Maintenance – September 23rd

Tuesday, September 20, 2005


We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from 9pm to 11pm PDT on Friday, September 23, 2005. While all AdWords advertisements will continue to run as normal, you will not be able to perform any API operations during this maintenance period.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

Solving an issue for clients using the .NET Framework

Monday, September 12, 2005


Last week we made some changes to the AdWords API WSDL, changing a few fields to nillable. This causes problems with certain toolkits, like the .NET Framework, for int nillable fields: the toolkit does not know how to map null values to value types such as int.

In order to make life easier for AdWords developers using those toolkits, we just altered the server behavior for maxCpc and dailyBudget: when these optional fields are unset, instead of sending null, we send nothing. This should solve the problem.

We hope that this change will help developers using the .NET Framework.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

Small features added to the AdWords API, and WSDL changes

Thursday, September 08, 2005


We've added 2 new features to the AdWords API: animated image ads and the ability to get client login email addresses. These features have been implemented and documented, so you can start using them.

CreativeService describes how you can now use animated images, flash images or animated GIF, in your image ads. The Image data structure shows that the ImageType enumeration now has 2 more possible values to reflect this feature: dynamicImage and flash.

AccountService has a new getClientAccounts operation that lets you find the primary email addresses for your own clients, or for your client's clients.

In addition to that, we made slight WSDL changes which may or may not oblige you to regenerate the SOAP bindings of your client programs. In response to developer feedback on the Forum, we changed a few fields to nillable in the KeywordService and CampaignService WSDL:

Keyword.minCpc, maxCpc and negative
Campaign.startDate, endDate and dailyBudget

We hope that these small additions will help you create more efficient ads and manage your accounts more easily through the AdWords API.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist

September 8th system maintenance

Wednesday, September 07, 2005


We'll be performing system maintenance on the AdWords reporting infrastructure on Thurs., Sept. 8, from 12 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. (PDT). During this time, any reports pulled from the Report Service will not be up-to-date. Shortly after the system maintenance, all reports will return to normal and will include data from the maintenance period. We apologize for this inconvenience.

--Patrick Chanezon, AdWords API evangelist