Campaign Management
The AdWords API aims to expose most of the functionality available in the AdWords web interface, including the ability to add, edit, and delete campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, etc. Display network features are also supported, including placements, product ads, and remarketing. This functionality is commonly used:
- To provide custom interfaces to manage campaigns, and integrate with analytics and CRM systems.
- To leverage internal data feeds to create new ads or pause and unpause campaigns based on business criteria.
- In scripts that automate manual and time intensive tasks.
See: CampaignService, CampaignCriterionService, CampaignAdExtensionService, AdGroupService, AdGroupAdService, AdGroupCriterionService
Ads management based on inventory
While studying conversion numbers for their campaigns, some customers discover that a significant amount of their ad clicks take visitors to a page for an item that is out of stock. One way to avoid this is to automatically manage your ads via the API based on your available stock. Every time an item availability is updated, a corresponding ad or ad group could be paused or unpaused, saving the budget and potentially improving conversion rates.
See: AdGroupService, AdGroupAdService
Bid Management
Using the reporting features of the API, keyword statistics can be retrieved, including fields related to impressions, clicks, conversions, etc. Other services provide information about how a keyword might have performed recently with different bids or with forward-looking estimates for a proposed bid change. Once you’ve done the calculations, you can apply the bid changes to your keywords and start the process again.
See: AdGroupCriterionService, DataService, TrafficEstimatorService, Reporting Basics
Dynamic Ad Text
Because ad text is frozen when the ad is created, updating an ad with the most recent price or quantity information requires constantly recreating it and waiting for it to be reapproved. The API provides a feature called ad parameters that allows for dynamic sections of an ad to be defined, which are then replaced by custom numeric values when the ad serves. These values can be updated using the API throughout the day and without reapproval, allowing for ads with the freshest available content.
See: AdParamService
Bulk Upload
The API provides functionality to simplify the deployment of large new campaigns, which can be difficult for customers going after long tail keywords. Our bulk job service allows you to upload large numbers of ads and keywords asynchronously, freeing up your application to do other work. Operations are applied automatically, removing the need to throttle requests to stay under the system’s rate limits.
See: MutateJobService
Keyword Research
Long tail advertisers looking to expand the keyword base they are bidding on can take advantage of the keyword research functionality provided by the API. New keyword ideas can be generated from a sample keyword or website. These keywords are returned along with the search volumes they received over the last year. You can then estimate the clicks they would receive within your ad group, as well as the total cost you can expect them to generate. The API allows you to programmatically leverage much of the functionality provided by the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator in the AdWords web interface.
See: TargetingIdeaService, TrafficEstimatorService
Performance Dashboard
The reporting features of the API allow for reports to be defined on-demand, and the data is usually available within seconds. You can use this to create custom dashboards for monitoring the performance of accounts, including fine-grained details such as per-keyword statistics. Powerful segmentation and filtering options allow you to focus in on the exact data that your users care about without extra client-side logic.
See: Reporting Basics
Synchronization with internal systems
In many cases, it’s useful to integrate information from AdWords with other internal systems, such as billing or conversion tracking. In particular, you may want offline access to data such as campaign and ad group listings or performance statistics such as impressions, clicks, cost, CTR, etc. The data can initially be extracted via reports and synchronized regularly by pulling updates for added campaigns. The AdWords API allows you to identify objects created or changed during particular date ranges and retrieve them independently.