Hello, everyone.
I'm Shreyas Doshi.
I'm a product manager here at Google.
And I work on various parts of AdWords,
including the AdWords API.
So let's get started.
Today, I want to basically leave you with three key
messages with regards to the AdWords API.
The first one is that we've actually been very busy since
we launched the AdWords API.
But the key thing I wanted you guys to walk away with, key
message, is that you need to start taking advantage of
these new features.
We've actually taken into account a lot of your feedback
and incorporated that in these new versions of the API.
Second is that since we've launched these versions of the
API, it basically implies that the old versions of the API
had to go away.
And so there's a migration coming up.
For instance, we are going to start sunsetting the remainder
of v13 and v200909 as these new versions launch.
And the third key message is that, while we've improved the
API, we realize that there are a lot of other problems that
you face that aren't yet addressed.
So let's start with what's new with the AdWords API.
The first one is preferred AdWords API pricing.
So that is something we launched for agencies and SEMs
in May of this year.
Preferred pricing is a way in which you can get basically
unlimited use of the API.
So it's an application process.
You apply with us.
And then as long as you meet certain requirements, we will
basically give you unlimited use of the API for free.
Second one is v13 is gone.
It's not really gone.
It's almost gone.
There are about three services that remain.
And so I will talk about what we're going to do with those
three services.
And the third is we've launched v201003, as well as
v201008 more recently.
And so let's look at the new features that we've released
in these versions.
So the first one, and the one that I'm very excited about,
is the ReportService.
So this is the new version of the ReportService.
The key thing about this version is that it's
significantly faster than the v13 ReportService.
Because it's built on our new architecture, it will enable
us to expose features much faster, so expose new fields
much faster than we've done in past versions of the API.
Second one is these exciting ad formats, product ads, which
is essentially product listing ads and product extensions.
And these are actually ads-- and you see they have images
associated with those products--
on Google Search.
It's a compelling ad format, and we launched support for
this in v201008.
Another feature is remarketing.
This is a very interesting feature.
And essentially, what it lets you do is it lets people who
browsed your site, who probably did not buy something
or basically end up in a conversion event, it lets you
target those users.
Because by definition they would be more engaged and more
interested in your products.
And so we've exposed a new service called the
UserListService, which essentially lets you target
users and converts browsers and searchers
into buyers for you.
Bid simulator is a feature which we launched in v201003.
And we also launched AdGroup, a big simulator in v201008.
And essentially, what that lets you do, as the name
indicates, it lets you simulate what your traffic
might have been for different values of bids.
Ad sitelinks.
Sitelinks are another compelling new ad format.
And they look a lot like just general text ads.
But what you see is they actually have forward links at
the bottom of the ad.
So what that lets you do is it no longer limits you to the
landing page or the home page or whatever it is that you
have in the destination URL.
But you can actually take the user to specific locations
within your web site and hopefully get better
conversions that way.
This is a feature that a lot of advertisers have been very
excited about.
And it's also available in the API.
Phone extensions.
This is very relevant for, say, the local use case where
a lot of times advertisers have told us, look, a click on
my website or for my website is interesting.
But what I really care about in some cases is
a call to my business.
And so what this lets you do is it lets you associate a
phone number with your ad as an extension.
And with that, you can actually include that phone
number in the text ad.
And it'll show up when the user is using a hybrid mobile
device like an iPhone, for instance.
There's a ton of other new stuff.
We've launched a new traffic estimator service.
There are a couple of other things like enhanced CPC,
target CPA.
And all of the information about this is available in the
docs, of course, and also on the blog.
And then we have some beta features that
we've launched recently.
So one is AdWords Campaign Experiments.
This is a feature that advertisers have been asking
for for a very long time from AdWords.
What it does is it lets you run live A/B tests.
Basically, instead of trying to guess what would happen if
you set your bid to a certain value, you can actually try it
as an A/B test and then see what performs better and more
in concert with your advertising goals.
Change history.
This is a feature which basically lets you download
changes that happened to specific accounts.
And so in the past, you guys have told us, look, every
night, I have this job that downloads the
entire campaign structure.
And sometimes it's a waste because maybe only a few
things in the campaign have actually changed.
We've heard that feedback in the past.
And we have been working on exposing this service.
What it does is it lets you query within the API for
specific entities that have changed.
And so you can say, give me a list of changes that have
happened since a particular date or in this time range.
And then it will give you the IDs of those entities.
And then you can only pull those entities instead of
pulling your entire account structure.
And then the last beta feature is a partial failures support.
The idea is, let's say you submit 1,000 operations to us.
And 10 of them somehow fail for one reason or another,
maybe they violate some policy rule.
Instead of your entire call failing, what this will do is
it will only fail the faulty operations.
So this is only exposed in one service right now.
But over time, we'll start exposing it in
more and more services.
So again, the key message that I want to convey is that you
should start using and taking advantage of these features as
soon as you can.
So when you go back, I would encourage you to talk to
various people in your organization and get these
features on your roadmap so you can take advantage of
better automation, more features in the API, and more
efficiency.