Previously, if any Google Ads API request had an invalid developer token, the API returned an OAUTH_TOKEN_HEADER_INVALID error, which is also used for other invalid request header values. To make it clear when the authentication error is specifically caused by an invalid developer token, we are changing the API to return a new error code, DEVELOPER_TOKEN_INVALID, for version v19.1 of the Google Ads API. All API versions before v19 will handle invalid developer tokens by throwing a DEVELOPER_TOKEN_NOT_APPROVED error instead. If you are using version v19 of the API with our client libraries, you will need to update to the latest version of the client libraries after the v19.1 release. These changes will be effective starting April 28, 2025.

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Previously, if any Google Ads API request had an invalid developer token, the API returned an OAUTH_TOKEN_HEADER_INVALID error, which is also used for other invalid request header values. To make it clear when the authentication error is specifically caused by an invalid developer token, we are changing the API to return a new error code, DEVELOPER_TOKEN_INVALID, for version v19.1 of the Google Ads API. All API versions before v19 will handle invalid developer tokens by throwing a DEVELOPER_TOKEN_NOT_APPROVED error instead. If you are using version v19 of the API with our client libraries, you will need to update to the latest version of the client libraries after the v19.1 release. These changes will be effective starting April 28, 2025.

Anyone who has already set up the Google Ads API to make successful calls are highly unlikely to be affected by this change. It is mainly meant to improve the experience of new developers onboarding to the API.

If you have any questions, please ask them in the Google Ads API forum. We're here to help!

 - Dora Sun - Google Ads API Team

We are introducing several changes to the CustomerService.CreateCustomerClient method to align the Google Ads API with how Google Ads UI handles new account creation functionality. These changes will take effect on ...Read More

We are introducing several changes to the CustomerService.CreateCustomerClient method to align the Google Ads API with how Google Ads UI handles new account creation functionality. These changes will take effect on March 17, 2025.

New error codes for policy enforcement
In order to limit abuse, the Google Ads API introduced two new error codes in the version v19 of the API for the purpose of policy enforcement.

1. Google Ads manager accounts that do not have a certain threshold of spending or a certain number of active child accounts without policy issues (for example, not suspended or closed for policy violations) will be ineligible to create child accounts under them. Developers will receive a CustomerError.CREATION_DENIED_INELIGIBLE_MCC error code in the upcoming version v19 of the Google Ads API. To fix the issue, link a Google Ads account that is compliant with the Google policies and meets the threshold spending levels under your manager account.
2. Google Ads manager accounts that have been flagged for policy violations related to account creation will no longer be able to create child accounts under them. Developers will receive a CustomerError.CREATION_DENIED_FOR_POLICY_VIOLATION error code in the upcoming version v19 of the Google Ads API.

In both these cases, existing API versions (v18 and older) will throw a ContextError.OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_CONTEXT error instead.

Quota limits for account creation
The Google Ads API will enforce limits on creation of new Google Ads accounts. Developers will receive a QuotaError.RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED error once the limits are reached. The retry_delay field of the quota_error_details contains additional details on how long you should wait before retrying the API call. We do not expect most developers to be affected by these limits.

What do I need to do?
If your application uses the Google Ads API to create new Google Ads accounts, you should review your code to ensure that your application correctly handles these new error codes.

If you have any questions or need help, check out the Google Ads API support page for options.Reach out to the Google Ads product support team for any questions related to account policies.
 - Anash P. Oommen, Google Ads API Team

What’s changing?
Starting the week of May 1 2025, we will roll out consent unbundling for OAuth user authentication to all Google Cloud projects which were created before 2019. If you own an application that uses an Ads-related API through a Google Cloud project created before 2019, you may need to update your application to handle unbundled user consent before ...Read More

What’s changing?
Starting the week of May 1 2025, we will roll out consent unbundling for OAuth user authentication to all Google Cloud projects which were created before 2019. If you own an application that uses an Ads-related API through a Google Cloud project created before 2019, you may need to update your application to handle unbundled user consent before May 1 2025.

Background
Consent unbundling for OAuth user authentication flow allows users to customize which specific OAuth scopes they want to authorize your application for, rather than an all-or-nothing approach. All the Google Cloud console projects created since 2019 have this feature turned on, whereas all the projects created before 2019 have this feature turned off.

The following screenshot shows the difference between an all-or-nothing consent prompt, and an unbundled consent prompt. Figure 1: All-or-nothing consent screen. Users aren’t allowed to choose from a list of OAuth scopes.

Figure 2: Unbundled consent screen. Users are allowed to choose from a list of OAuth scopes.

Who is affected by this change?
You will be affected by this change if ALL of the following conditions are met:

1. Your API application uses a Google Cloud Console project that was created before 2019.
2. Your application implements the OAuth 2.0 user consent flow – an authentication workflow where the user logs in with their Google account and grants one or more permissions that your application is requesting.
3. Your application uses more than one Google API, and one of the APIs is an Ads-related API listed below.

Who isn’t affected by this change?

• Existing refresh tokens: This change doesn’t affect user authentications that you already have in place. Your existing refresh tokens will continue to work without any changes or re-authentication.
• Single scope applications: If your application uses only one Google API scope, your application isn’t affected by this change, since there aren’t multiple OAuth scope to unbundle.
• Single user applications / Manually authenticated applications: Your application doesn’t have an explicit OAuth user authentication flow implemented. Instead, you use a manual authentication script such as GenerateUserCredentials, gcloud CLI or OAuth Playground to authenticate the user, and then use those credentials for a long period of time. Since you select all the scopes that your application requires while authenticating, your application isn’t affected by this change.
• Service accounts: If your application uses a service account to authenticate your API calls, you won’t be affected by this change

What do I need to do?
You need to ensure that your application can handle partial user consent. To do this,

1. Request the list of OAuth scopes that the user consented to by including the include_granted_scopes parameter in your OAuth flow.
2. Examine the actual list of OAuth scopes that the user consented in the OAuth response.
3. Implement incremental authorization in your application.

Review our OAuth granular consent guide to learn about the requirements and best practices to handle granular consent.

How do I test this feature?
There are two ways to test this feature:

1. Create a new Google Cloud project: New Google Cloud projects have enabled OAuth consent unbundling. So you can create a new Google Cloud project, and use it for testing your application.
2. Enable consent unbundling in your existing project: You can set the enable_granular_consent parameter to true in your OAuth authorization request.

Which API scopes are affected?
The following APIs related to Ads are affected by this change.

API	OAuth Scope
Google Ads API	https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords
Google Ad Manager API (SOAP API, Beta)	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/dfp https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admanager
Bid Manager API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/doubleclickbidmanager
Content API for Shopping	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/content
Display and Video 360 API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/display-video-mediaplanning https://www.googleapis.com/auth/display-video-user-management
AdMob API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admob.report https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admob.googlebidding.readwrite https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admob.monetization
AdSense for Platforms API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adsensehost https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adsense https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adsense.readonly
Google Analytics API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.readonly https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.edit https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.manage.users https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.manage.users.readonly https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.provision https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.user.deletion
Campaign Manager 360 API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/ddmconversions https://www.googleapis.com/auth/dfareporting https://www.googleapis.com/auth/dfatrafficking
Search Ads 360 API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/doubleclicksearch
Google Tag Manager API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.delete.containers https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.edit.containers https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.edit.containerversions https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.manage.accounts https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.manage.users https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.publish https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.readonly
Real time bidding API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/realtime-bidding
Authorized Buyers Marketplace API	https://www.googleapis.com/auth/authorized-buyers-marketplace https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adexchange.buyer

How to get help
If you have any questions or need help, reach out to your respective API’s support team with your questions.
 - Anash P. Oommen, Google Ads API Team

Google Ads has rolled out a new feature that allows Google Ads account administrators to grant access to a service account. Once the access has been granted, you can use the service account credentials to make API calls to that Google Ads account and other accounts in that hierarchy, if applicable. Refer to the service account guide to learn more about this option.

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Google Ads has rolled out a new feature that allows Google Ads account administrators to grant access to a service account. Once the access has been granted, you can use the service account credentials to make API calls to that Google Ads account and other accounts in that hierarchy, if applicable. Refer to the service account guide to learn more about this option.

This new approach simplifies the Google Ads API authentication process in two important ways:

1. If your application works entirely offline without any user interaction, then you no longer need to generate a refresh token. This means you can also avoid other steps such as configuring an OAuth consent screen and performing OAuth App verification.
2. The new service account flow doesn’t require you to be a Google Workspace user or configure the service account for domain-wide impersonation.

We hope this simplifies your experience when working with the Google Ads API.

How to get help

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

 - Anash P. Oommen, Google Ads API Team

The Google Ads Developers Channel is your video source for release notes, best practices, new feature integrations, code walkthroughs, and video tutorials. Check out some of the recently released and popular videos and playlists below, and remember to ...Read More

The Google Ads Developers Channel is your video source for release notes, best practices, new feature integrations, code walkthroughs, and video tutorials. Check out some of the recently released and popular videos and playlists below, and remember to subscribe to our channel to stay up to date with the latest video content.

Google Ads API Best Practices - Error Handling and Debugging
In this episode of the Google Ads API Best Practices Series, we discuss how to handle errors that may occur when interacting with the Google Ads API, along with tools that may help you debug your applications, such as logging and the REST interface.
Meet the Team with David Wihl
In this video, David Wihl shares a bit about his role as a Developer Relations Engineer at Google and discusses his work in supporting the Performance Max campaign API integration.

[Live Demo] Building a Google Ads API Web App
Getting started with the Google Ads API? In this 8-episode series, we take a deep dive into developing web apps with the Google Ads API, with a focus on the OAuth flow, by building a multi-tenant app entirely from scratch.

Logging & Monitoring
This miniseries covers the basics of adding logging and monitoring to your Google Ads API integration and then goes into more advanced topics, with a special focus on Cloud tooling.

• Introduction
• Logging and Monitoring in the Cloud
• Sending Client Logs to Google Cloud
• Creating and Monitoring Custom Metrics

Google Ads Query Language (GAQL)
In this series, we cover everything you need to know about the Google Ads Query Language to make reporting requests against the Google Ads API. We begin with the basics and build in subsequent episodes to cover various nuances of GAQL. We even dive into the various tools available to help you structure your queries. This playlist will equip you with the information you need to know to become a GAQL power user.

• Getting Started with GAQL
  • Intro to Reporting & the Google Ads Query Language
  • Query Structure & Grammar
  • Segmentation
  • GoogleAdsRow
  • GetKeywordStats Coding Example
• Using the GoogleAdsFieldService
  • Retrieving Field Metadata
  • GAQL Fields and Clauses
• Query Validation
  • Understanding Field Compatibility
  • The SELECT Requirement
  • Date Range Validation
  • Constructing Filtering Conditions in the WHERE Clause
  • Validating GAQL Queries

For additional topics, including Authentication and Authorization and Working with REST, check out the Google Ads API Developer Series.

As always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions via the Google Ads API forum or at googleadsapi-support@google.com.
- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team