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Good news for developers planning to integrate Google Shopping ads! We have just released a brand new guide explaining how to automate the delivery of Google Shopping on behalf of merchants using Google APIs.

The Shopping Automation Guide covers the steps required to set up new merchants using a combination of the Content API for Shopping and AdWords API. It describes how you can fully automate certain tasks that would otherwise be performed manually using the Merchant Center and AdWords websites.

The guide is for developers interested in feed management, campaign management, or full automation workflow that includes both. The workflows provide detailed explanations of how the different APIs can be used for each stage of the user journey. You can follow the workflow step by step or navigate straight to the article you require using the side panel.

Head over to the developer pages to get started! If you have any questions or need help, please contact us on the relevant forums:

• Content API for Shopping forum
• AdWords API forum

If you have any feedback on the guide, please use the “Send Feedback” link at the top right of each page.

We also appreciate any feedback on your experience using the guide. If you would like to share it, please complete this survey.
 - Ian Ballantyne, AdWords API Team

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The Shopping Content API now supports the retrieval of invalid product offers. This means that offers such as those with an invalid category or a mismatched URL can now be retrieved and reviewed via the API. This will enable you to more easily view invalid product offers and debug API requests. Going forward, invalid product offers that are newly inserted via the API will be available for review in the Diagnostics tab of the Merchant Center.

How should you go about retrieving your invalid offers from the API? You can do this by using a new optional URL parameter that has been added to the products.list method, called includeInvalidInsertedItems. (Yes, it's a long name; we apologize for the extra keystrokes.) If you set this parameter to true, your response will include products that were invalid at the time of insertion. The default value is false, so if you don't include the parameter in your request, you will not have invalid products in your response. This preserves existing behavior, with the exception that if you have invalid product offers from feeds, they will also not be returned in the response. Note that you can still use the 'get' and 'delete' methods to reference product offers directly by ID, even if they are invalid. No additional parameter is needed for those methods.

We are introducing one new error when inserting product offers, called "The item could not be inserted". An invalid offer is inserted only if it does not overwrite an existing valid offer. When there already is an existing valid offer, an additional error is returned, stating "The item could not be inserted". This also means that the product offer will not be available for review from products.list nor in the Diagnostics tab. Product offers are matched based on the full product ID, of the form channel:languageCode:countryCode:offerId.

It's important to remember that the new includeInvalidInsertedItems parameter will only filter between valid and invalid product offers, as determined at insertion time, ignoring whether they were or not later disapproved. This means that it will return invalid product offers inserted both from the API and from feeds. To distinguish between approved and disapproved product offers, use the Productstatuses Service.

To try out this new parameter, add includeInvalidInsertedItems as a query parameter to your products.list request. If you have more questions or feedback, please head on over to our developer forum.
  —Yufeng Guo, Shopping API Developer Relations

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We are pleased to announce the launch of API support for account-level tax & shipping for the Google Content API for Shopping v2. Previously, this was only available on the Merchant Center UI. This API feature will match the configuration options available in the UI.

This launch enables you to programmatically specify default tax and shipping rules that apply to all products within an account through the Accountshipping and Accounttax services. Specifically, the account-level tax and shipping rules apply to all products, but can be overridden by item-level tax and shipping settings, which are in the Products service. Note that products' taxes and the Accounttax service are only applicable to products targeting the US.

The shipping settings allow you to set-up different shipping services using calculation methods ranging from flat rate to carrier-based rates, and you can use rate tables or decision trees to specify conditions on price, weight, and delivery location. Please see our guide and reference documentation: Accountshipping service, Accounttax service, which will help you get up and running with these new services.

The second addition is new date fields that many have asked for. The Productstatuses service in v2 of the API has 3 new fields:

• creationDate: the date that a product was first inserted into the Merchant Center.
• lastUpdateDate: the date that the product was last updated. This may be the same as the creationDate. It also reflects updates from Inventory service.
• googleExpirationDate: the date that your product will expire in Google Shopping. By default, products usually expire after 30 days of no updates.

Also, the Products service contains an expirationDate field. This field represents the date as submitted by the merchant. The field is optional, and can be useful for setting an expiration date that is closer than 30 days away.

Another use case of expirationDate is for products you wish to expire later than 30 days away; for example, 40 days away. As you continue to resubmit the product, this date will remain unchanged, and the product will not expire until the expirationDate is reached. Remember that if you don’t resubmit a product within a 30-day window, it will automatically expire, regardless of what date you set in expirationDate. There is no equivalent v1 field to expirationDate.

On that note, please be aware that these new features are not available in v1, which is deprecated and will be sunset at the end of February 2015.

We hope these new features will simplify your process for configuring tax and shipping settings, and clarify your product expiration dates. As always, feel free to reach out on the developer forums if you have any questions.   —Yufeng Guo, Shopping Developer Relations

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The deadline for the migration to v2 of the Content API for Shopping is less than 2 months away! As such, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight some useful features in the developer documentation for the Content API for Shopping, which will make it easier to find the information you need:

• The Migration Guide shows you how to smoothly transition from v1 to v2.
• The Guides section features in-depth coverage of implementing many aspects of the API.
• The search bar now allows for auto-complete responses as you type your query.
• Running into errors? Consult the Common Errors page, located in the Reference section.
• The Reference section also contains our detailed descriptions of each API call, as well as an in-browser.
• For troubleshooting your requests, check out the API dashboard.
• If you have additional questions about the API, please head over to our support forum.

We hope these features will make it easy for you to navigate the documentation and find the help you are looking for.

  —Yufeng Guo, Shopping Developer Relations

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We recently enhanced the documentation site for Google scripts by including more content and improving site navigation. The major changes are:

• A new and improved introduction to AdWords scripts.
• A new section named “Solutions” that consolidates existing tutorials with 10 new ready-to-use scripts.

We are constantly striving to improve our documentation to make getting started with AdWords scripts even easier. If you have ideas for enhancing the documentation, let us know on our official forum or through the feedback link on each document page.

 - Anash P. Oommen, AdWords Scripts Team

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We recently created two visual representations, the Basic SDK Interaction Diagram and the SDK-Player Interaction Diagram, that illustrate the actions that occur once your video player is fully integrated with the v3 IMA SDK. These diagrams outline both:

• the high level interactions that take place among the IMA SDK, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), AdSense for Video (AFV), Ad Exchange (AdX) and any third party ad servers
• the more detailed communications that take place between the IMA SDK and your video player

The diagrams are meant to assist you when integrating your video player with the v3 IMA SDK. They can help to visualize the interactions that are taking place when video content and ads are being played (as well as the sequence in which these actions are occurring). Both diagrams are available within the left-hand navigation of the IMA SDK documentation under Resources and are linked to directly from within the IMA HTML5 SDK and IMA Flash SDK Working with Ads pages.

Feel free to contact us on the forum if you have any questions about these new learning tools and if you found them useful (or use the Feedback on this document link on the page). You can also reach out to us on our Google+ page.

- Joe Roepcke, IMA SDK Team

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We are pleased to announce that updated localized editions of the IMA SDK v3 documentation are now available for the following languages:

• Spanish
• Japanese
• Korean
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Russian
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)

To view the localized edition of the latest documentation, be sure to select the desired language from the menu in the footer of any page.

Let us know on the forum if you have any questions about our localized content (or use the “Feedback on this document” link in the upper right-hand corner of any page). You can also reach out to us on Google+ page.

- Joe Roepcke, IMA SDK Team

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With the release of AdWords API v201302, we’ve introduced several new features as well as a number of changes to the existing services. Six new guides covering key features of v201302 are now available on the Developers site:

• v201302 migration guide: Covers all breaking changes introduced in v201302. Review this guide for a summary of client code changes required when migrating from v201209.
• Enhanced campaigns guide: Enhanced campaigns are the next generation of AdWords campaigns. Refer to this guide for details on upgrading your legacy campaigns with the API.
• Managing account links guide: In the new version, we’ve published an API to control account linking. This guide now covers all steps required to add or remove a managed account under your MCC.
• Feeds guide: AdWords API v201302 contains 4 new services used to manipulate feeds. This guide describes each of them and covers typical feed use cases.
• Bidding guide: Bid setting and bid transitioning were simplified in API v201302. This guide provides new bidding objects usage examples.
• Shared sets guide: Shared negative keywords lists and placement exclusions are now available in the API as beta features. If you are a beta user, check out this guide for more details.

We’ve covered every advanced feature released in v201302 with this set of guides and hope you’ll find them useful. As usual, feel free to ask us questions on the forum or during office hours.

- Danial Klimkin, AdWords API Team.

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We understand the importance of documentation when navigating a system as complex as the AdWords API. For this reason, we would like to remind you about the reference materials available on our Developers site

First off, we’ve updated the Selector Fields page that provides information about the fields that can be used in generic selectors. This information is available on an object’s individual reference page, but we’ve collected it together across entire services for quicker lookups.

Next, we’ve added more columns to the Report Types page to include a field’s type, its behavior, and its XML and display names. The behavior of a field in the generated report describes its effect on zero impression rows as well as whether the field represents historical data or the latest object state.

Finally, we’ve added new tips to our Best Practices Guide on topics such as grouping batch job operations by ad groups and campaigns and using the partial failure feature. The guide is a great resource for developers starting an AdWords API project, but is also useful for established developers trying to increase the efficiency of their applications.

There is a feedback link on the top right hand corner of every page where you can report documentation issues. For technical help, visit our forum or office hours. You can also follow the Google Ads Developer page for all Ads-related updates.

 - Eric Koleda and  - Danial Klimkin, Ads Developer Relations Team.

We are happy to announce availability of the AdWords API documentation for v201109 release in 9 languages in addition to English. In time for your upcoming migration with deadline on February 29, 2012 ...Read More

We are happy to announce availability of the AdWords API documentation for v201109 release in 9 languages in addition to English. In time for your upcoming migration with deadline on February 29, 2012, we have released the latest documentation in Chinese, French, Japanese, German, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The drop-down menu at the top right corner of the documentation can be used to change the language.

If you have any questions, suggestions or requests for improving docs please post on the forum.

- Stan Grinberg, AdWords API Team