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

Accurate click accounting is a critical aspect of any campaign. However, traditionally it often came with a high cost to the user experience: the user has to follow one or more HTTP redirects, or is forced to wait for a synchronous logging request to complete before they can navigate to their destination. The Beacon API addresses these shortcomings:

• Beacon requests are prioritized by the browser to minimize conflict with other time-critical operations, like reacting to user input.
• Beacon requests are guaranteed to be initiated before a page is unloaded and are allowed to run to completion without requiring blocking requests or other techniques that block processing of user input.

In short, Beacon provides a fire-and-forget API that ensures logging requests are queued and completed by the browser, without the need for blocking requests or additional redirects. This allows users to be taken directly to landing pages without waiting on the click account requests to complete, greatly reducing latency.

AdWords recently switched from redirects to the Beacon API to account for some of the ad clicks on Google.com. This resulted in significant latency improvements. For example, for ad clicks pointing to Google Maps pages, the median latency dropped by 250ms and the 90th percentile latency dropped by more than 1,000ms.

You do not need to take any action at this time to benefit from SendBeacon. Chrome, Firefox and Edge all support SendBeacon, accounting for over 72% of worldwide traffic. We are planning to leverage Beacon API in more of our products in the future, and we encourage everyone else to take it out for a spin.

Posted by Saurabh Mahajan, Leo Sei and Ilya Grigorik

TL;DR: New feeds and feed items will automatically be added to eligible AdWords accounts.

This year, mobile search engines are predicted to drive nearly 33 billion clicks-to-call to businesses globally, almost 19% more calls than from mobile landing pages alone (BIA/Kelsey, July 2016). Using Google call extensions, you can get more calls by making it easy for people to contact you right from your mobile search ads.

If you manage accounts with ads that take users to landing pages prominently featuring a phone number, starting February 6, 2017 you will see call extensions automatically added for these mobile search ads via the extension setting services.

When added automatically, the new feed will have ORIGIN of "USER". You can update call extensions yourself directly with Feed services, Call Extensions or the AdWords user interface at any time.

You’ll be able to get detailed reporting insights (API report) about your calls performance (including call duration, call start and end time, caller area code) and whether the call was connected. You can also set up call conversion tracking to see which parts of your campaigns are driving the most valuable calls.

These extensions will only be added automatically once to each campaign or ad group and will not be re-added if modified or removed in the user interface or via the API. You can also indicate if you don't want extensions to be created for a specific account in the AdWords user interface:

1. On the Ad extensions tab select “View: Automated extensions report”
2. Scroll down to “Automated extension options (advanced)” and click on “Edit”
3. Uncheck the option for “Automatic call extensions” under “Do not use specific automated extensions in this account”. 

As always, if you have any questions about this announcement, or other questions about the AdWords API, contact us via the forum.
 - Danial Klimkin on behalf of AdWords API Team.

Sitelinks in ads let you show additional links to specific pages on your website and are an effective way to drive traffic to your business. Account level sitelinks started rolling out recently in the AdWords user interface.

The AdWords API already supports sitelinks at the account level across all versions without any changes. You can use the CustomerExtensionSettingService to read and mutate the existing extension type SitelinkFeedItem, or associate sitelinks via Feed services.

If you have any questions, please let us know on the forum.
 - Danial Klimkin, AdWords API Team.

TL;DR: Swiffy will stop converting SWF files from 1st July, 2016.

Recently, we announced that we're transitioning all of our display ads to HTML5. As part of this transition, we're sunsetting our Swiffy Flash conversion service and support for the Swiffy Flash extension on July 1st 2016. After this date, you will no longer be able to use either to convert SWF files to HTML5. We will continue to serve the Swiffy runtimes, so any file you convert before the sunset date will continue to play.

Today more consumers are using the web in HTML5-compatible environments than Flash-compatible environments. In order to reach as large an audience as possible, we encourage everyone to transition to HTML5 authoring.

Developers who currently create Flash SWF files have several ways to switch to HTML5, including Adobe Animate and Google Web Designer. If you need to play an existing Flash SWF file in your browser alone, you may be able to use Mozilla's Shumway.

 - Danial Klimkin, on behalf of AdWords API Team.

We would like to remind you to upgrade destination URLs for ads, criteria, and sitelinks by March 25, 2016.

Shortly after March 25, 2016, we will apply the following changes to the ads, criteria, and extensions in your account that have not been upgraded:

• Ads and sitelinks will be permanently designated as “Removed” and will stop serving. In rare cases, destination URLs for ads may be upgraded for you, which may impact how your ads run.
• Destination URLs for your keywords will be removed. Clicks on your ads for these keywords will go to the ad's landing page. You'll need to set up new landing page URLs and tracking parameters.
  
  Note: Dynamic Display Ads, Gmail Sponsored Promotion, and Lightbox ads are not impacted by this change and will continue to serve.

How to upgrade your remaining destination URLs
To ensure your existing ads continue to run and your URL tracking works as expected, you'll need to:

• Identify all remaining enabled or paused destination URLs within your account that require an upgrade.
• Upgrade your destination URLs by following the steps in the Upgraded URL guide.

What if I can’t upgrade in time?
If you do not plan to upgrade destination URLs by March 25, 2016 or wish to keep the destination URL details for future use, then we advise you to download the ads, criteria and extensions that are not upgraded using an appropriate AdWords API service. Destination URL data is accessible for now via AdWords API reports and services, but this field will be removed in a future version of the AdWords API.

If you have any questions or need help with migration, please post on our developer forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.

Anash P. Oommen, AdWords API Team

In April, we announced that Search Network with Display Select support would begin in AdWords API v201402. Now that all previous API versions have been sunset, we’re on schedule to begin migrating all Search and Display Network campaigns to Search Network with Display Select beginning September 16, 2014.

This blog post will walk through everything you need to know about setting up your campaigns, including what this migration means for your campaign-creation code. You can proactively migrate your campaigns by setting their displaySelect property to true.

Remember, this will not affect Search-only or Display-only campaigns. Only campaigns that target both networks simultaneously will be migrated.

If you have any questions about this change, please contact us on the forum or via our Google+ page.
 - Michael Cloonan, AdWords API Team.

It’s an exciting time to be a performance marketer. When we combine the creative magic of marketing with technology that’s available anytime, anywhere, and on any device, we can connect with customers in more innovative and relevant ways than ever before.

We are constantly working to improve AdWords, and on Tuesday, April 22, 2014 at 9am PT, Jerry Dischler, VP of Product Management for AdWords will share a brand new set of innovations with you live on the Inside AdWords blog. Register for the livestream here.

Building on the success of enhanced campaigns, Jerry will announce a number of new features that help you use context to reach customers in even more effective ways. We’ve designed new tools so you can increase awareness and engagement everywhere your customers are online – from the web, to the mobile web, to mobile apps. And when it’s time to manage your campaigns and measure performance, we want to help you do so efficiently in AdWords with new functionality designed for the multi-screen world.

These AdWords innovations are the result of countless conversations we’ve had over the past year with advertisers, both large and small. Based on your feedback, hundreds of product managers and engineers worked hard to build these new products. Simply put, we built these new products for you.

We hope you’ll join the April 22 livestream of our announcements featured here on the Inside AdWords blog. Register for the livestream here. Until then, follow us on our +GoogleAds page for sneak previews of what’s to come. Use hashtag, #StepInsideAdWords, to join in on the conversation.

Posted by Your Inside Adwords Team

AdWords scripts allow you to create and email PDF documents, complete with pretty formatting and images. You can schedule a script that emails a professional-looking PDF report to your client weekly, complete with logos, watermarks, signatures, and other artwork. This blog post discusses this feature in more details.

Sending an attachment

The following snippet sends an email with an attachment:

// assuming you have a good-to-go blob, more on that later.
MailApp.sendEmail(
    "us...@example.com",
    "TPS report",
    "Please find the TPS report attached to this email",
    {attachments: [blob]}
);

BLOB stands for Binary Large OBject. In Google Apps Script, blobs are used as the in-between data format that allows different services to pass data to each other.

Creating a BLOB

Start with an HTML string, and use Utilities.newBlob() to convert it into a blob:

var html = "<h1>TPS report</h1><p>Please read this carefully and respond " +
    "by end of day...</p>"
var blob = Utilities.newBlob(html, MimeType.HTML);

Converting a blob into PDF is as easy as

var pdfBlob = blob.getAs(MimeType.PDF);

Dealing with images

A reasonable attempt looks like this:

var html = "<img src='url_of_the_image'>";

But that, unfortunately, won't work. The PDF generator never actually fetches resources that your HTML links to, so the image won't make it into the PDF. You need to specify the source of the image inline instead, as a base64-encoded string:

<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADIA..." />

Don't worry about the contents of the base64-encoded strings - they are gibberish and will consume lots of screen space if printed out.

Putting it all together

The following snippet will fetch the image from imageUrl, embed it into the PDF, and email the results to us...@example.com:

// fetch the image. This example assumes it's a PNG.
var imageBlob = UrlFetchApp.fetch(imageUrl).getBlob();

// grab its bytes and base64-encode them.
var base64EncodedBytes = Utilities.base64Encode(imageBlob.getBytes());

// create HTML.
var html = "<h1>TPS report</h1><img src='data:image/png;base64," +
    base64EncodedBytes + "'/>";

// create a blob, convert it to PDF.
var htmlBlob = Utilities.newBlob(html, MimeType.HTML);
var pdfBlob = htmlBlob.getAs(MimeType.PDF);

// give it a name - this will become the file name of the attachment.
pdfBlob.setName("tps_report.pdf");

// send the email.
MailApp.sendEmail(
    "us...@example.com",
    "TPS report",
    "Please find the TPS report attached to this email",
    {attachments: [pdfBlob]}
);

Instead of fetching the image from the URL, you can upload it to Google Drive and use DriveApp to fetch it:

var blobFromDrive = DriveApp.getFilesByName(imageFileName).next().getBlob();

So there you have it - blobs aren't just fun to say, they're useful as well. If you have questions or feedback about this feature or AdWords scripts in general, you can post them on our developer forum or our Google+ page.

Posted by Ilya Netchitailo, AdWords Scripts Team

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.

Editor’s note: "reposting from Google Mobile Ads Blog post by Morgan Hallmon." -- Stan Grinberg, Ads Developer Relations Team

Apps are a powerful way to keep your most loyal users engaged, and can also be a real driver of revenue for marketers big and small. When advertising apps, the key is to know what’s working and what’s not. While advertisers have already been able to measure their Android app downloads within AdWords, we’ve now launched the ability to track iOS downloads that were driven by in-app display ad campaigns.

To set up iOS conversion tracking, advertisers need to create a single code snippet in their AdWords account and install it in their app. This snippet is accessible in the AdWords interface in the same place where advertisers have been able to codelessly track Android downloads. With iOS conversion tracking, marketers can better understand which campaigns are most effective at driving app downloads. These enhanced insights help marketers iterate on app promotion strategies to reach their return on investment goals, with the help of features like the Conversion Optimizer for apps.

Figuring out what ads are working is key for marketers like Sho Masuda, Vice President of Player Marketing for GREE, a leading mobile social game app developer. GREE has used click to download and in-app advertising solutions with AdWords to promote their app, and Masuda says, "Google’s host of tracking and optimization tools help us quickly iterate and maximize ROI across our app promotion campaigns. iOS conversion tracking will help us gain even deeper insights into our Google app promotion efforts for our iOS apps.

If you’d like to learn more about how to track value beyond the app download, you can watch a recording of our Learn with Google webinar “Understanding your App Users with Google Analytics” here.

Posted by Morgan Hallmon, Product Manager