How to find out the specific type of Video Ad

[j.e.frank]

I'm trying to write a report that will show stats for our campaigns
that have video ads, and I want to distinguish between "click-to-play"
video ads and "pre-roll" video ads. I'm running a Creative report
(aka Ad Performance in the UI) to get the data. The problem I have
is that both kinds of video ads come through in the XML as
creativeType="gadgetTemplate". How can I tell which specific type of
ad it is?

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi,

Unfortunately that level of detail isn't exposed through reporting, in
both the web interface and API.

Best,
- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team

[j.e.frank]

Thanks for the reply. Is there a way to find out the specific type of
ad through other API services? I can't see anything in the
AdGroupAdService that would let me distinguish these ads from one
another, but maybe I am missing something. My first preference would
be to find out through the report, since that lets me get the ad type
information at the same time as I am retrieving performance data, but
really I'm just looking for any automated way to get it.

On Dec 30, 10:26 am, AdWords API Advisor

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi,

The video ads you create using the web interface's "Display Ad
Builder" will be returned as TemplateAds in v2009:

http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/v2009/docs/reference/AdGroupAdService.TemplateAd.html

The specific template being used, such as "Click to Play" or "In-
Stream", is noted by the field templateId. We are still working on
how best to expose the currently available templates, but a few get()
requests will allow you to determine the mapping yourself.

Best,
- Eric

[j.e.frank]

Thank you, that is helpful.

I have tried calling AdGroupAdService.get on several ad IDs that I
know are video ads. Sometimes this works fine, and I can infer that
(for example) template ID 49 is Pre Roll and template ID 9 is Click to
Play. But sometimes I pass in an Ad ID and I get nothing back in the
results. This is puzzling to me, because I can see the Ad ID in the
report. Do you know of any reasons that no result would come back for
a given Ad ID?

On Dec 30, 11:26 am, AdWords API Advisor
<adwordsapiadvi...@google.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>

> The video ads you create using the web interface's "Display Ad
> Builder" will be returned as TemplateAds in v2009:
>

>  http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/v2009/docs/reference/AdGroupAdSer...

[j.e.frank]

Does anyone know why some Ads do not come back in the AdGroupAdPage's
entries when calling AdGroupAdService.get ? One of my campaigns has 3
pre-roll Ads (aka In-Stream). I pass in the three Ad IDs, and I only
get back 2 results. If I just pass in the "missing" Ad's ID as the
selector, then the resulting entries array is null. I have double
checked the IDs, and I can see that particular Ad ID in a report, so
as far as I can tell, it should show up in the results, but it does
not.

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi,

Are you able to see that same ad in the web interface? Are you able
to retrieve it via the v13 API?

Best,
- Eric

[Alex]

We're experiencing a similar problem with text ads.

[j.e.frank]

I cannot retrieve this ad with the v13 API. If I call
AdService.getAllAds and pass in the parent ad group ID, I get back
null (this ad group only contains in-stream ads). If I call
AdService.getAd for the specific ad, I get an API exception with the
message "This creative type is not supported by the api."

I have some trouble telling which ad is which in the web interface,
but by matching up the stats from the report, I can see that the ad in
question is deleted. (I can see it if I set the "filter and view" to
include deleted ads.) So that may be why the ad is not returned in
the results, although I should be able to retrieve a deleted ad's info
through the api, since the ad still exists, and there are stats for it
from before it was deleted. The API call I am using takes an explicit
array of Ad IDs, so it is not just that I am asking for "all active
ads" or anything. I don't know if this is a general issue (inability
to retrieve deleted ads) or if it is specific to my circumstances.

On Jan 4, 7:02 pm, AdWords API Advisor <adwordsapiadvi...@google.com>

[j.e.frank]

Any word on why I might not be able to retrieve these Ads?

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi,

I apologize for taking a while to look into this issue. At first I
focused on the fact that they were template ads, but it seems that the
problem has to do with the fact that they are deleted ads, and
currently the v200909 AdGroupAdService is nor returning deleted ads.
I will contact the core engineering team to determine if this is the
correct behavior and update this thread when I have more information.

Best,
- Eric