Cost of using the AdWords API to manage ads and keywords

[Peter Lind]

I'm trying to find out what using the AdWords API costs before digging
into it - as I don't see the fun in blowing a budget on getting code
to set up only to find it's too expensive to run.

The scenario:

- List item
- we've got a number of campaigns with a total of about 50,000
keywords
- we want to manage these keywords as automatic as possible (which
essentially means getting current info about the keywords, settings
status for keywords - pausing them if needed - and managing bids)

Basically, this means querying the API service for info on all
adgroups, updating specific ads or keywords as needed.

Am I correct in reading the http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/docs/ratesheet.html
to mean that getting info for keywords is 1 unit per keyword, meaning
a minimum spend of 50,000 units to get the info? Is there an option
that doesn't suck up units like there's no tomorrow?

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi Peter,

Retrieving 50000 keywords using AdGroupCriterionService will cost you 50000 API units as per the rate sheet. Instead, you can use a keyword performance report to pull your keywords and their stats. You can create one report definition for 400 units and download the report daily; report download won't cost you any API units. Updating the status and budgets will cost you API units, but chances are that those costs are lesser since you may not update 50000 keywords every day.

AdWords API also provides some free units to Advertisers; see http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=45891 for details. If you are an Agency, you can apply for AdWords API preferred pricing to receive free units. See http://www.google.com/adwords/api/preferredpricing/ for details.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have more questions.

Cheers,

Anash P. Oommen,

AdWords API Advisor.

[Peter Lind]

Thanks for the answer Anash - that does make more sense than the
solution I had arrived at.

We're looking at handling adwords for clients we have, so I assume
we'd fit into the agency category. Given that, I read the
http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/docs/requirements.html page and I
wonder if our use false under "Internal-Only AdWords API". The tool
we're looking at creating will automatically manage a clients adwords
(per the scenario above). The client would be allowed to configure
some settings and monitor status, but there would be no actual
interaction with the client. Given this, do we have fully implement
the required minimum functionality or would that not apply to our
scenario?

TIA
Peter

On Aug 11, 2:26 pm, AdWords API Advisor <adwordsapiadvi...@google.com>
wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> Retrieving 50000 keywords using AdGroupCriterionService will cost you 50000
> API units as per the rate sheet. Instead, you can use a keyword performance
> report to pull your keywords and their stats. You can create one report
> definition for 400 units and download the report daily; report download
> won't cost you any API units. Updating the status and budgets will cost you
> API units, but chances are that those costs are lesser since you may not
> update 50000 keywords every day.
>
> AdWords API also provides some free units to Advertisers; seehttp://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=45891for
> details. If you are an Agency, you can apply for AdWords API preferred

> pricing to receive free units. Seehttp://www.google.com/adwords/api/preferredpricing/for details.

[timp]

You may also think about using the CustomerSyncService.

Seems to work well.

In the past there were all sorts of tangential problems to using the Reports for info retrieval (file size clipping (which there is was a hack around), long execution time, google sometimes would (occurred just a few days ago.. again...) send back malformed data, general google failure [especially on the first of the month]), but there was no other option.

Maybe all these problems have been resolved though.

-tim