What's changed for Shopping ads

In August 2020, we simplified how you use product data across countries. In the past, you needed to submit duplicate products with separate targetCountry values for each country in which you wanted to serve Shopping ads. Now you can simply configure additional countries of sale for each primary feed in Google Merchant Center to serve ads for the same product in multiple countries. You can also add additional countries on a per-product basis by using the shipping field.

What's changed for free product listings

In October 2020, we announced that free listings will soon be available across the world. We also removed the ability to use account-level shipping settings to allow ads and free listings to be served in multiple countries. For more information, see the Merchant Center announcement: Use additional countries to determine your reach.

What you should do

As a result of these recent enhancements, we recommend that you do the following when serving ads and listing your products in multiple countries:

• Stop submitting duplicate products with separate targetCountry values for each country you want to advertise in.
• If you want all of the products in your primary feed to be eligible for ads and free listings in multiple countries, add the additional countries to the feed in Merchant Center.
• If you only want specific products to be eligible for ads and free listings in multiple countries, add the additional countries on the shipping field of each product.

Check out our Content API guide, Targeting Shopping ads and free listings in multiple countries, for examples and additional details.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please reach out to us on the forum.

 Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

Starting January 18, 2021, we will start migrating Maximize Clicks bid strategies that still utilize the deprecated target_spend setting to use campaign daily budget pacing instead. This follows last year’s sunset of the target_spend field for Maximize Clicks. After that sunset went into effect, Google Ads has prevented users from creating any new Maximize Clicks strategies that have a target_spend setting.

What’s changing

As part of this migration, any Maximize Clicks bid strategies that still use the target_spend setting may have their maximum CPC bid limit lowered to minimize the performance impact that may result from this change. This would affect the following API fields:

Fields whose values may be lowered as part of the January 18, 2021, migration:
AdWords API	Google Ads API
TargetSpendBiddingScheme.bidCeiling	TargetSpend.cpc_bid_ceiling_micros

What you can do

You can avoid the above changes by removing the target spend setting on your campaigns’ bidding strategies before January 18, 2021. To do so, unset the following field (set its value to 0) on any existing Maximize Clicks bid strategies:

Fields to unset (set to 0) to avoid the migration:
AdWords API	Google Ads API
TargetSpendBiddingScheme.spendTarget	TargetSpend.spend_target_micros

If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum or at googleadsapi-support@google.com.

 Adam Ohren, Google Ads API Team

As of October 1, 2020, any Google Cloud app used to obtain credentials for the Google Ads API or AdWords API scope (https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adwords) in its projects (i.e. any new AdWords API or Google Ads API developers) will need to undergo a Google OAuth verification to avoid an unverified app screen for its users. An app, in this context, is defined as a unique OAuth 2.0 Client ID in Google Cloud. This verification is independent and in addition to any reviews conducted as part of the developer token approval process.

There is no cost for the Google verification, which typically completes in 3 to 5 business days. Information on how this process fits in the larger task of authorizing requests can be found in our guide. The verification status of a given app can be viewed at the OAuth consent screen of a Google Cloud Project.

Apps already using the Google Ads API or AdWords API scope prior to October 1, 2020 are not currently affected by this policy. However, this policy will be applied to all apps at a later date in 2021, and it is recommended that all apps undergo the Google OAuth verification process at their earliest convenience to avoid any business interruptions.

If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum or at googleadsapi-support@google.com.
- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Today we’re releasing an incremental update to the Display & Video 360 API v1 which includes the following features:

• A new warningMessages field for line items. This field exposes warnings usually displayed in the platform UI that do not obstruct the line item from being saved, but may affect or block the serving of the line item.
• A click-through rate (CTR) performance goal type for the performance goal object utilized in campaigns and insertion orders.

Today’s update also includes changes to how quota is handled in the Display & Video 360 API. The following usage limits are now in effect:

• A default daily limit of 86,400 total requests made to the API per project. This limit can be increased on a case-by-case basis to customers who have demonstrated need for a higher limit.
• A rate limit of 600 total requests per minute.
• A rate limit of 300 write requests per minute, which are calls to methods (such as create, patch, delete, and bulkEdit) that modify resources.

More detailed information about this update can be found in the Display & Video 360 API release notes.

Before using these new features, make sure to update your client library to the latest version.

If you run into issues or need help with these new features, please contact us using our support contact form.

- Trevor Mulchay, Display & Video 360 API Team

Beginning October 1, 2020, any new Google Cloud app with a unique OAuth 2.0 Client ID used to obtain credentials for the Google Content API scope (https://www.googleapis.com/auth/content) in its projects will need to undergo a Google OAuth verification to avoid an unverified app screen for its users. Users of unverified apps that access the Content API will see warnings and the apps will have limited functionality.

There is no cost for app verification and the process typically takes 3 to 5 business days. For more information about how app verification fits into the broader process of authorizing requests, see our Using OAuth guide.

Apps already using the Content API scope prior to October 1, 2020 are not currently affected by this policy. However, this policy will be applied to all apps at a later date in 2021, and we recommend that all apps undergo the Google OAuth verification process at their earliest convenience to avoid any business interruptions.

For more information about app verification, see OAuth API verification FAQs. If you have any questions or need additional help, please reach out to us on the forum.
Benji Rothman, Content API for Shopping Team

We’re excited to announce a new feature for app developers who use Unity: Ad Placements. It is now available in Open Beta.

What are Ad Placements?

Ad Placements provide a cleaner and more intuitive way to place ad units from Google AdMob in your games. Ad Placements allow developers to add ad units with a Unity Editor interface, making the specification of ad units for your game centralized, re-usable, and decoupled from your scripts.

You can then create Ad GameObjects that reference these Ad Placements entirely from the Unity Editor, which means no need for additional scripts!

Developers don’t need to write code to manage the ad unit. Callback functions and ad unit creation are all managed directly in the Unity UI.

Why use Ad Placements?

We’ve developed Ad Placements to help address the feedback that many of you have shared, which is integrating the Google Mobile Ads Unity plugin APIs requires too much scripting. Now with Ad Placements and their associated Ad GameObjects, implementing Google Mobile Ads into your Unity games should be a lot easier and more intuitive. You can add placements, load ads and show them all from easy-to-use Unity Editor integrations. With this new UI-driven approach, we can help you insert ad placements into your game with almost no additional code.

How do I get started?

See the Ad Placement documentation for a download link to the early access build and instructions to help you get started.

As always, please reach out on our developer forum if you have any questions.

 - Samuel Stow, Mobile Ads Developer Relations