Google Ads Developer Blog: January 2017

Automatic removal of invalid location extension filters

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

AdWords offers several different strategies for configuring filters for your Google My Business locations. However, users sometimes choose filters that do not match any locations, which results in no location extensions appearing with ads.

What's changing?
Starting on February 14, 2017, AdWords will perform a daily check to determine if the following location extension feed item filters are not matching any Google My Business locations:

PlacesLocationFeedData
- businessNameFilter
- categoryFilters
- labelFilters
CampaignFeed and AdGroupFeed
- matchingFunction

If any such invalid filters are found, they will be automatically cleared as outlined in the updated Location Extensions guide.

Please keep the following details in mind:

The periodic check will only clear matchingFunction filters on a CampaignFeed or AdGroupFeed for location extensions (placeholderType = 7). It will not clear filters on those objects for location targeting (criterionType = 77).
The periodic check will not clear matching functions of the form IDENTITY(false), since these indicate that you want to disable location extensions for a campaign or ad group.

What you should do

To minimize the impact of the periodic check, regularly review your application's location feed setup and ensure that you are choosing filtering options on your PlacesLocationFeedData and matching functions that actually match locations in your Google My Business account.
Make sure that your application will be able to handle the filter changes made by the periodic check.

If you have any questions, please post on the AdWords API Forum.

- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team

Upgrade to AdWords API campaign drafts and experiments before February 1st

Monday, January 23, 2017

Last year, we announced that you have until February 1st, 2017 to upgrade from ExperimentService to the new campaign drafts and experiments introduced in v201603. After this date, you’ll no longer be able to use ExperimentService.

API calls to ExperimentService across all API versions will result in an error
All experiments running via ExperimentService will be stopped
All ExperimentService experiments will be deleted and their stats will be unavailable

Check out our Campaign Drafts and Experiments guide for examples while upgrading your code. If you have questions while you’re upgrading, please reach out to us on the AdWords API forum.

Nadine Sundquist, AdWords API Team

Upgrade to expanded text ads and responsive ads before January 31st

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Last year, we announced that you have until January 31st, 2017 to upgrade your standard text ads to expanded text ads or responsive ads. After this date, you’ll no longer be able to create new standard text ads. Existing standard text ads will continue serving alongside expanded text ads and responsive ads.

To prevent any errors when creating ads, it’s important to immediately upgrade to expanded text ads or responsive ads before January 31st, 2017. To help you get started, we’ve put together a few resources:

Expanded text ads guide: Check out the tips section for recommended ways to upgrade, ways to measure upgrade progress, and links to additional resources. Watch the short video.
ETA Transition Helper: An AdWords script to help upgrade standard text ads to expanded text ads in bulk. Watch the short video.
Responsive ads guide: Use responsive ads when upgrading your standard text ads on the Google Display Network. Responsive ads adapt seamlessly across the millions of apps and websites on the GDN.

If you have questions while you’re upgrading, please reach out to us on the AdWords API forum.

Nadine Sundquist, AdWords API Team

Mobile search ads will feature a click-to-call option automatically after Feb 6th

Thursday, January 12, 2017

TL;DR: New feeds and feed items will automatically be added to eligible AdWords accounts.

This year, mobile search engines are predicted to drive nearly 33 billion clicks-to-call to businesses globally, almost 19% more calls than from mobile landing pages alone (BIA/Kelsey, July 2016). Using Google call extensions, you can get more calls by making it easy for people to contact you right from your mobile search ads.

If you manage accounts with ads that take users to landing pages prominently featuring a phone number, starting February 6, 2017 you will see call extensions automatically added for these mobile search ads via the extension setting services.

When added automatically, the new feed will have ORIGIN of "USER". You can update call extensions yourself directly with Feed services, Call Extensions or the AdWords user interface at any time.

You’ll be able to get detailed reporting insights (API report) about your calls performance (including call duration, call start and end time, caller area code) and whether the call was connected. You can also set up call conversion tracking to see which parts of your campaigns are driving the most valuable calls.

These extensions will only be added automatically once to each campaign or ad group and will not be re-added if modified or removed in the user interface or via the API. You can also indicate if you don't want extensions to be created for a specific account in the AdWords user interface:

As always, if you have any questions about this announcement, or other questions about the AdWords API, contact us via the forum.

- Danial Klimkin on behalf of AdWords API Team.

Accountstatuses to now include validation issues in Content API for Shopping

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Starting on January 17th, 2017, Accountstatuses will return all the errors and warnings present in the Diagnostics tab of Merchant Center. This updates Accountstatuses to match the changes to Productstatuses from last August, so Accountstatuses will now report validation issues as well as data quality issues. This means that developers may see more issues returned by Accountstatuses than before.

If you have any questions or feedback about the changes to issue reporting or other questions about the Content API for Shopping, please let us know on the forum.

- Stevie Strickland, Content API for Shopping Team

Deprecating Flash in the IMA SDKs

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

On June 1, 2017, Google will cease development of Flash in the IMA SDKs. This will end support for the IMA SDK for Flash, as well as support for Flash VPAID ads in the HTML5 SDK. We strongly encourage all publishers still using the Flash SDK to migrate to the HTML5 SDK. We also strongly encourage advertisers still trafficking Flash VPAID ads to migrate those ads to JavaScript VPAID. What does this mean for the Flash SDK? We will not actively prevent ad serving to the Flash SDK. However, new releases will stop after June 1st and we will no longer fix bugs or answer support questions. If ad serving or playback stops working after this date for the Flash SDK, it will not be fixed. We strongly encourage you to migrate to the HTML5 SDK. What does this mean for the HTML5 SDK? We will no longer support Flash VPAID ads in the HTML5 SDK. Flash VPAID ads served to the HTML5 SDK will not be rendered and the SDK will fire an error. We strongly encourage you to migrate your Flash VPAID ads to JavaScript VPAID. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team

Sunset of DFP API v201602

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

On Tuesday, February 28, 2017, in accordance with the deprecation schedule, v201602 of the DFP API will be sunset. At that time, any requests made to this version will return errors. If you're still using this version, now's the time to upgrade to the latest release and take advantage of new features like HTML5 creatives, programmatic support, and retrieving saved report queries. To do so, check the release notes to identify any breaking changes, grab the latest version of your client library, and update your code. Significant changes include:

The reporting format CSV_EXCEL has been renamed TSV_EXCEL to more accurately describe its actual format.

Team.companyIds, Team.adUnitIds, and Team.orderIds have been removed. Use Company.appliedTeamIds, AdUnit.appliedTeamIds, and Order.appliedTeamIds instead.

Order.programmaticSettings has been replaced by Proposal.ProposalMarketplaceInfo.

getCustomTargetingValuesByStatement() now enforces the requirement of a custom targeting key ID in the filter statement.

This is not an exhaustive list, so as always, don't hesitate to reach out to us with any questions. To be notified of future deprecations and sunsets, join the DFP API Sunset Announcements group and adjust your notification settings.

- Chris Seeley, DFP API Team

Upcoming changes to AwReporting

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

AwReporting is an open-source Java framework that is optimized for large-scale retrieval of AdWords API reports.

We plan to release a new major version (v2.0) within the next few months that will

provide a full suite of reports with a full list of fields
support using raw enum values and excluding hidden accounts

This release will have some backwards incompatible changes, such as

If you are actively using the aw-reporting-server or aw-reporting-server-appengine module or have any questions about this upcoming release, please let us know on this forum thread.

Zhuo Chen, AdWords API Team

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