Read More

Beginning in August 2017, DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) will no longer export standard tags for placements larger than 1x1. This is the next step in a phased rollout of changes aimed at aligning DCM's impression counting methodology with the latest Interactive Advertising Bureau and Media Rating Council guidelines. A full overview of these changes can be found in the DCM partner help center.

How will this affect DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API users?

On August 22, 2017, the API's placements.generatetags endpoint will stop returning standard tags (PLACEMENT_TAG_STANDARD) for non-1x1 placements. Users will still be allowed to include this tag format in all generatetag requests without error, however responses will only contain standard tag data for 1x1 placements. This will be a retroactive change affecting all API versions.

What can API users do to prepare?

Users should begin updating their API workflows to request alternative tag formats, such as PLACEMENT_TAG_JAVASCRIPT or PLACEMENT_TAG_IFRAME_JAVASCRIPT, for all non-1x1 placements. Although standard tags will still be returned for 1x1 placements after August 2017, users leveraging pixels for impression tracking are encouraged to use tracking ads for this purpose, instead.

Existing non-1x1 placements trafficked using standard tags will continue to serve until October 2017. Any such placements which are part of a campaign ending later than this must be re-trafficked using an alternative tag format. Instructions for identifying these placements can be found in the DCM partner help center.

Questions about this or anything else DCM API related? Contact us via our support forum.
- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Read More

Today we’re excited to announce that the Google Slides API has been added as an Advanced API to AdWords scripts. Our Advanced APIs allow you to work with other Google services within the scripts you write. The Google Slides API allows you to create and write presentations programmatically, and with AdWords scripts it can be used to publish your campaign data in a ready-to-be-shown format.

To learn more about using the Google Slides API in your scripts, please refer to our guide to working with Advanced APIs and code snippets. We encourage you to try Slides and our other Advanced APIs and let us know of other APIs you would like to see added.

As always, please leave feedback on our forum so that we may handle bugs and improve usability.

- Rohan Dhoopar, AdWords Scripts Team

Read More

Following the validation rule changes in May 2017, we’re updating ad groups that contain only Dynamic Search Ad features.

Specifically, we’re updating the adGroupType to SEARCH_DYNAMIC_ADS for any ad group that has all of the following properties:

• Is in a non-REMOVED Search campaign that has a DynamicSearchAdSetting
• Does not have a status of REMOVED
• Has at least one Webpage criterion
• Does not have any biddable Keywords criteria
• All of the ads in the ad group that are not of type DynamicSearchAd or ExpandedDynamicSearchAd must have a status of REMOVED

After the above-mentioned ad groups have the SEARCH_DYNAMIC_ADS type, you’ll be able to add only DynamicSearchAd and ExpandedDynamicSearchAd objects, and not Keyword objects as BiddableAdGroupCriterion.

As always, if you have any questions, please post on the forum.
 - Thanet Praneenararat, AdWords API Team

Read More

Back in March, we launched the new Report Builder in DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM). Over the coming months, we'll be migrating all reports from the legacy reporting platform (v1) to Report Builder (v2). This migration will complete on September 25, 2017, at which point access to v1 reporting will be removed. We'll also be disabling access to the Google Cloud Storage buckets used by v1 reporting on that date.

Once the migration to v2 reporting is complete, the only way to access reports programmatically will be via the DBM API. Users who currently access reports through Google Cloud Storage must migrate to using the API before September 25, 2017 to avoid an interruption in service. To learn more and quickly get started with the API, visit our getting started guide.

If you have questions regarding these changes, please reach out to your DoubleClick account team.
- Jonathon Imperiosi, DBM API Team

Read More

Starting today, we are deprecating the use of the Products.get and Products.list methods for retrieving all product attributes. These methods still work as expected today, but they may change in the future to return only partial information about products. If you want to retrieve all product attributes, you should use the Productstatuses.get and Productstatuses.list methods instead, which now optionally provide product attributes in addition to product issues and approval statuses.

Note that the Productstatuses.get and Productstatuses.list methods still do not return product attributes by default. To request product attributes be included, we have added an optional includeAttributes argument to these methods. When set, the resources returned by Productstatuses.get and Productstatuses.list will contain an additional product field that contains the attribute information.

If you have any questions or feedback about the changes to retrieving products or other questions about the Content API for Shopping, please let us know on the forum.
 - Stevie Strickland, Content API for Shopping Team

Over the past few months, a couple new projects designed to streamline AdMob and DFP mediation have launched: mediation groups, open source adapters, and network-specific guides.

Open Source Mediation Adapters on GitHub

Read More

Over the past few months, a couple new projects designed to streamline AdMob and DFP mediation have launched: mediation groups, open source adapters, and network-specific guides.

Open Source Mediation Adapters on GitHub

In partnership with some of our mediation partners, we've open-sourced many of the most popular adapters used with DFP and AdMob mediation. You can see for yourself at our GitHub repos for iOS and Android:

• https://github.com/googleads/googleads-mobile-android-mediation
• https://github.com/googleads/googleads-mobile-ios-mediation

In addition to adapter source, there's also a project containing example adapter and custom event implementations, plus a test app.

Import Mediation Adapters with CocoaPods and Gradle

In addition to open-sourcing the adapters, we've also made importing compiled adapters into your projects simpler by uploading them to Bintray and making them available via jCenter and CocoaPods. Rather than downloading and manually including libraries, publishers can get the correct adapter simply by updating their Podfile with a line like this:

    pod 'GoogleMobileAdsMediationMoPub'

...or their build.gradle file with a line like this:

    compile 'com.google.ads.mediation:mopub:11.10.1.0'

With many ad networks choosing to distribute their SDKs in the same manner, it's frequently possible to bring a new mediation network into an app with nothing more that a Podfile or build.gradle tweak. For instructions on which gradle artifacts and CocoaPods to use, check the AdMob Mediation Overview (iOS, Android) and look for networks in the "Open source and versioned" section.

Network-specific guides

Each mediated network is a little bit different. They have their own front-end, their own reporting systems, and their own vocabulary including things like "placement," "location," or "zone." Once you start trying to add a second or third network to your mediation waterfall, things can get confusing in a hurry.

To help publishers navigate through these details, we've created network-specific guides for the mediation partners who have joined our open source repositories. Each one includes step-by-step instructions (with screenshots) that guide a publisher all the way from configuring their account in the mediated network's web site to setting up their mediation stack and importing the right adapter.

For more details, there's no better place to go than the guides themselves. You can find them in the AdMob Mediation Overview (iOS, Android).

Questions?

If you've got questions about our open source adapters or the best ways to get up and running with mediation, stop by our support forum.

 - Andrew Brogdon, Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Read More

We’re pleased to announce a new set of workshops for AdWords scripts in 2017. The workshops will be held at the following locations:

• Hamburg, Germany: 10 August 2017
• London, UK: 15 August 2017
• Singapore: 15 August 2017
• Sydney, Australia: 18 August 2017
• São Paulo, Brazil: 20 September 2017
• Buenos Aires, Argentina: 22 September 2017

This round of workshops will cater to both novice and experienced scripters. We'll have code labs where you’ll build your own scripts from scratch with help from the scripts team. Bring your laptop and some scripting ideas, and we’ll turn them into reality!

Whether you’re an advertiser who wants to learn how to use scripts to automate your account management tasks, a developer who wants to polish your skills, or you'd just like to bounce around some ideas, you can find it all in these workshops.

Availability is limited, so be sure to visit our website early to check out the full agenda and sign up.

If you have any questions about the workshops, you can post them on our forum.
- Mike Cloonan, AdWords API Team

Read More

On Thursday, August 31st, 2017, in accordance with the deprecation schedule, v201608 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 support for creating ImageOverlayCreatives, Partner companies, new team actions, and the change history table. 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:

• Reporting dimensions and columns are now at parity with Ad Exchange.
• Editing AdUnit assignments to Placements now happens in the Placement service.
• AdUnit.inheritedAdSenseSettings has been replaced with AdUnit.adSenseSettings and AdUnit.adSenseSettingsSource.
• The AdUnit fields mobilePlatform, partnerId, isSharedByDistributor, and crossSellingDistributor have been removed.
• Placement fields adSenseTargetingLocale, isAdsenseTargetingEnabled, targetingDescription, targetingSiteName, and targetingAdLocation have been removed to align with the UI.
• Company.Type enumerations AFFILIATE_DISTRIBUTION_PARTNER and CONTENT_PARTNER have been removed. 
• CrossSellingDistributor has been removed.
• Added actions to support programmatically activating and deactivating teams.

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.

 - Gabe Rives-Corbett, DFP API Team.