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Google Ads Developer Blog: account_management

Google Ads is rolling out a new feature that allows the account administrator to request its users to switch from a regular personal email address (for example john.doe@gmail.com) to a business email address (for example john.doe@example.com). We are making this change to improve account security and reduce potential surface for abuse. This is an informational post to highlight how this feature could affect the Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts developers.

Google Ads is rolling out a new feature that allows the account administrator to request its users to switch from a regular personal email address (for example john.doe@gmail.com) to a business email address (for example john.doe@example.com). We are making this change to improve account security and reduce potential surface for abuse. This is an informational post to highlight how this feature could affect the Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts developers.

How does this feature work?

To use this feature, the account administrator sends a request to an account user from the Google Ads UI to switch their personal email to a business email. If the user accepts, then the following steps are bundled behind the scenes:

  • A business email address is added to the Google Ads account.
  • A grace period of one month starts, where both the personal email address and business email address are active users in the Google Ads account.
  • The personal email address is removed from the Google Ads account at the end of the grace period.

Refer to our help center guide to learn more about this feature.

How does this affect API developers?

As a developer, you may need to do the following additional steps:

  1. If the user has authorized your application to make API calls to the Google Ads account using their personal email address, then the OAuth 2.0 refresh token will stop working once the personal email address is removed from the Google Ads account. You need to authorize the user with the new business email address.
  2. This change only works with Google Ads accounts. If the user manages other accounts, such as Google Analytics or Google Merchant Center, then the email address needs to be switched manually in those accounts. See the help center page for a more comprehensive list of locations where you might have to make a change.
  3. If you have authorized and scheduled Google Ads Scripts with the personal email address, you need to authorize the scripts with the business email address after this change.

How to get help

If you have any questions or need help, check out the Google Ads API support page or Google Ads scripts support page for options.

What happened?

For developers linking Merchant Center accounts to Google Ads using Google Ads API v14, there was an issue from 04:00 PST Monday, Feb 19 to 08:00 PST Tuesday, Feb 20 that caused some requests to the MutateMerchantCenterLink method of MerchantCenterLinkService to return MutateError.RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND. Also calls to ListMerchantCenterLinks may not have returned some MerchantCenterLinks with link status PENDING.

What happened?

For developers linking Merchant Center accounts to Google Ads using Google Ads API v14, there was an issue from 04:00 PST Monday, Feb 19 to 08:00 PST Tuesday, Feb 20 that caused some requests to the MutateMerchantCenterLink method of MerchantCenterLinkService to return MutateError.RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND. Also calls to ListMerchantCenterLinks may not have returned some MerchantCenterLinks with link status PENDING.

What should I do?

If you use Google Ads API v14 to link Merchant Center accounts to Google Ads accounts using MerchantCenterLinkService, you should check to see if you have accounts that have pending link requests during the period of time described above. This issue has now been resolved and you may retry the failed calls to complete the linking of Merchant Center accounts. Also check ListMerchantCenterLinks for accounts with link status PENDING. Some of these link requests may not have previously been returned during that time period.

How to get help

If you have any questions or need help, check out the Google Ads API support page for options.

We are accepting early sign-ups for a Google Ads API pilot program that lets you make API calls without requiring a developer token. Your API access levels will instead be identified by your Google Cloud project IDs and Google Cloud organizations.

We are accepting early sign-ups for a Google Ads API pilot program that lets you make API calls without requiring a developer token. Your API access levels will instead be identified by your Google Cloud project IDs and Google Cloud organizations.

This pilot provides benefits such as:

  • No more need to secure developer tokens
  • Better integration with Google Cloud console API quota management tools

Refer to our developer documentation to learn more about this feature.

If you have any questions, please contact us on the forum.

What’s Changing

Starting the week of September 4, 2023, MerchantLinkService.MutateMerchantCenterLink method will fail with an AuthorizationError.ACTION_NOT_PERMITTED error for authorized users without Admin access levels.

Required Actions

If your application mutates Merchant Center links using the MutateMerchantCenterLink method, review the account permissions of the users authorizing API calls and update their permissions appropriately to ensure they have the required access levels. Refer to the help center guide for instructions.

What’s Changing

Starting the week of September 4, 2023, MerchantLinkService.MutateMerchantCenterLink method will fail with an AuthorizationError.ACTION_NOT_PERMITTED error for authorized users without Admin access levels.

Required Actions

If your application mutates Merchant Center links using the MutateMerchantCenterLink method, review the account permissions of the users authorizing API calls and update their permissions appropriately to ensure they have the required access levels. Refer to the help center guide for instructions.

Change Rationale

This change will align the Google Ads API behavior with other products such as the Google Ads UI and Google Ads Editor, which only allow Administrator users to mutate Merchant Center links. Currently, the Google Ads API allows users with Standard Access levels but without Admin access level permissions to mutate Merchant Center links using the MerchantLinkService.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us on the forum.

Update May 8, 2018: Updated roll out month.
What's changing?
Beginning mid-May, 2018, once an AdWords account reaches 15 months without any spend, it will be canceled in order to speed up the AdWords experience and help users stay within the manager account limits. This also means that right now, if your account has reached 15 months without spend, it meets the criteria and will be canceled. After an account is canceled:
  • get requests for ManagedCustomerService will no longer return the account.
  • Any AdWords API request that specifies the account's customer ID in the clientCustomerId header will fail with an AuthorizationError.CUSTOMER_NOT_ACTIVE starting with v201802 and an OperationAccessDenied.ACTION_NOT_PERMITTED error for earlier versions of the AdWords API.
  • Any unspent prepaid amount will be refunded back to the advertiser.
  • All ads in your account will stop automatically within 24 hours.
Note: Test accounts will not be canceled.

What should you do?
If your application issues AdWords API requests against inactive accounts, make sure you download any relevant data for those accounts before the cancellation process starts. For example, you may want to run reports to gather historical stats for the date range where the account had activity.

If you are using an inactive account in order to test your integration with the AdWords API, consider creating a test account instead. Test accounts will not be canceled by the ongoing cancellation process.

To avoid issues once the cancellation process starts, you can proactively cancel accounts as follows:
  • Log into your manager account.
  • Go to the Accounts page, where you can adjust the date range and review the performance metrics for each account under the manager account to help you identify inactive accounts.
  • Check the box next to each account you want to cancel.
  • Select Edit -> Cancel account.
To reactivate an account, follow the instructions in the AdWords Help Center. If you are logged in as a manager account, you can show canceled accounts by adjusting the filter in the upper left corner as follows:

Note: If the account is under one or more manager accounts, you will only be able to reactivate the account if doing so will not exceed the manager account limits.

If you have any questions, please contact us via the forum.

On September 12th, AdWords announced that you can now use one Google login to access multiple AdWords accounts. With this change, you can associate up to 5 AdWords accounts with a single Google account.

To take advantage of this new feature, the AdWords API has changed the behavior of CustomerService.getCustomers() starting with v201603. In the past, the Google account you used to obtain your OAuth2 credentials could only be associated with one AdWords account, which resulted in getCustomers() only returning one AdWords account. Now that a Google account can be associated with multiple AdWords accounts, getCustomers() can return multiple AdWords accounts. If you only want to retrieve the details of a specific customer using CustomerService, you can set the clientCustomerId in the request header starting with v201607.

Questions? Visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page.

In AdWords you could choose to optimize your automated bidding on "Converted clicks" or "Conversions." AdWords recently announced that we're saying goodbye to "Converted clicks" in favor of “Conversions,” which offers much more flexibility and measurement options. As a result, we’re updating the API.

The conversionOptimizerMode attribute of the Customer.conversionTrackingSetting allowed you to set ONE_PER_CLICK ("Converted clicks") or MANY_PER_CLICK ("Conversions") at the account level.

Starting on September 21, 2016, all AdWords accounts will be automatically migrated to set conversionOptimizerMode to MANY_PER_CLICK, and new mutate operations to change this setting will fail with RequestError.INVALID_INPUT.

Prior to September 21, 2016, ensure your CustomerService mutate requests do not attempt to modify the value of conversionOptimizerMode. You can also migrate your accounts before the migration by setting conversionOptimizerMode to MANY_PER_CLICK.

If you have any questions, please let us know on the forum.

The v201601 release of the AdWords API included a new optimizeOnEstimatedConversions attribute of Customer.conversionTrackingSettings that allowed you to opt-in to including cross-device conversions in the Conversions column. With this option set to true, AdWords includes cross-device conversions when optimizing for conversions in an automated bid strategy.

What's changing
  • Starting on August 16, 2016, new AdWords accounts will automatically have optimizeOnEstimatedConversions set to true.
  • During September, 2016, the optimizeOnEstimatedConversions setting will be changed to true on all existing AdWords accounts to give you the most complete view of performance possible.
  • Starting on September 6, 2016, the optimizeOnEstimatedConversions field in the AdWords API will become read-only. If your CustomerService mutate request attempts to modify this field by sending a value other than the current value, the request will fail with RequestError.INVALID_INPUT.
For more information, check out the recent Inside AdWords blog post on cross-device conversions.

What you should do
Prior to September 6, 2016, ensure that your CustomerService mutate requests do not attempt to modify the value of optimizeOnEstimatedConversions. You can also migrate your accounts before the migration by setting optimizeOnEstimatedConversions to true.

If you have any questions, please post on the forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.

We are excited to announce that AdWords scripts for MCC is now available as a limited beta for developers. This beta allows you to create AdWords scripts at the MCC level to efficiently manage changes across your client accounts at scale.

You can sign up for the limited beta at https://services.google.com/fb/forms/mccscripts. Once we’ve added you, we’ll send you an email with instructions on how to get started with MCC Scripts. You can learn more about this feature on our getting started guide.

We encourage you to try out this new feature and let us know what you think on our forum or our Google+ page.

We have added a few new helper methods to the Account class. The new methods are

  • getLoginEmail: Returns the email address of the account's first login user.
  • getName: Returns the name of the account.
  • getStatsFor: Returns stats for the specified predefined or custom date range.

We have added a few new helper methods to the Account class. The new methods are

  • getLoginEmail: Returns the email address of the account's first login user.
  • getName: Returns the name of the account.
  • getStatsFor: Returns stats for the specified predefined or custom date range.

We hope you enjoy these new features. If you have questions or feedback, let us know on our forum!