Failed to Get a List of Automatic Placements via AdGroupCriterionService

[Tommy Choi]

Dear all,

I have tried to get a list of placements as shown in the "Networks" tab in the AdWords Web MMC.

I used AdGroupCriterionService and had set CriteriaType = PLACEMENT in the predicates of the selector.

What I got were only managed placements, with no automatic ones.

Do I need to use other service? Or the only way to get automatic placements is via "Automatic Placements Performance Report"?

Thanks for your generous help.

[Kevin Winter]

Hi,

  Automatic placements are generated on the fly based upon the criteria in your AdGroup - you cannot obtain them via the AdGroupCriterionService - this service only returns values that you have yourself specified.  You will need to run a report, as you mentioned, to obtain these placements.  Please keep in mind that this report will only return a value for the automatic placement if it received at least one click or above a certain threshold of impressions (it would have its domain listed in the UI if these conditions were met).

- Kevin Winter

AdWords API Team

[Tommy Choi]

Thanks Kevin,

I found that the "Other Domains" figure is missing in the Automatic Placements Performance Report.

I made a search in the forum and it turned out that such figure was not yet provided.

If you can, would you please ask corresponding engineering team to quickly provide this figure for us?

Many thanks.

[GregT]

Hi, Tommy.

You can actually get that information from the Criteria Performance Report.  It will show up with a keyword of "Content" (criteria id 3000000), criteria type of "Keyword".

FYI,

Greg

[Kevin Winter]

Hi Tommy, Greg,

  This is partially correct.  You can obtain the figures for the Other Domains (as listed in the UI) by running a Criteria Report for all Criteria types that can trigger automatic placements (such as keywords, verticals, etc), take the totals from that report and subtract the sum of all rows returned by the Automatic Placements report to get the Other Domains figure.  If you only use Keywords as criteria, then the Content keyword as mentioned by Greg will work in place of the Criteria report I mentioned.  (this is the method the UI uses to display this information - note that this is only useful to explain where 100% of impressions came from, as no cost nor clicks will be attributed here).

- Kevin Winter

AdWords API Team

[Tomer Peled]

Hi, 

Is there anything new with the retrieving of the Automatic placements or the solution that is mentioned here is the only one?

Also, can you please describe what do you mean by running the report and to retrieve the information from it? 

Did you mean to run it automatically somehow (API) and then to parse the xls file and to retrieve the information from there?

Thanks,

Tomer

בתאריך יום חמישי, 22 במרץ 2012 07:59:53 UTC+2, מאת Tommy Choi:

[Kevin Winter]

Hi Tomer,

  There are no new developments for this functionality.  As previously mentioned, these numbers are only for impressions (no clicks, and therefore no costs) for domains not explicitly listed.  Why is this information useful?

- Kevin Winter

AdWords API Team

[Tomer Peled]

Hi Kevin,

So there is no way to get the automatic placements and it's full stats via the API?

Thanks,

Tomer

בתאריך יום שלישי, 31 ביולי 2012 22:13:38 UTC+3, מאת Kevin Winter:

[Kevin Winter]

Hi Tomer,

  You can still receive a report on all automatic placements via the Automatic Placements report.  The only missing functionality is the other domains part the UI displays.  Every automatic placement that receives a click or a certain threshold of impressions will show up in the report.  The other domains grouping contains all placements that didn't receive clicks or a certain threshold (I believe 100) of impressions.

- Kevin Winter

AdWords API Team

[Tomer Peled]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for the explanation.

So just to summarize, In order to get the automatic placements I'll have to run the automatic placement report, which might be involved with the downloading of the report file and then to parse it, correct?

Thanks again,
Tomer

[Kevin Winter]

Hi Tomer,

  Yes, this is correct.  The client libraries come with a DownloadCriteriaReport example that demonstrates how to use the client library to download a report (parsing is left as an exercise).

- Kevin Winter

AdWords API Team

[Tomer Peled]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for your generous help!

I played with the automatic performance report but it seems that there are several values that are missing:

1) Why there is no unique id to any of the automatic placements like there is to the managed placements? Is this due to the large amount of the automatic placements?

2) I want to get the following information: maxCPC, AveragePosition, QualityScore , FirstPageCPC, where can I find it? I tried to get it via the CRITERIA_PERFORMANCE_REPORT - but with no success.

Thanks,

Tomer

[Kevin Winter]

Hi Tomer,

  The difference between automatic and managed placements is that managed placements are criteria (something you specify) and automatic placements are dynamically chosen by the system based on the other criteria associated with your AdGroups.  For example, if you set up automatic placements and keywords, a given keyword will be used to trigger an automatic placement, so the maxCpc, etc, will correspond to that criteria rather than the automatic placement.  With placements, the impression occurs on a given domain, which then triggers a search for a list of all possible ads, given configured criteria.  Once a lucky criteria was chosen the ad is displayed.  Managed placements are effectively criteria that say "show an ad on this domain" whereas a keyword could trigger an ad on any domain (within the configuration of your campaigns, adgroups, etc).  Therefore automatic placements don't have a "criteria id" since they aren't criteria, they are the results of other criteria. (where as a manual placement is both a criteria and an ad placement).

As to the fields you've listed, those seem to be mostly criteria-related fields.  For example, examining the maxCpc for an automatic placement would be difficult - there are multiple keywords that could be triggering a given automatic placement.  If you want more fine grained control over placements, we recommend using the automatic placements report to find high performing automatic placements and add them as manual placements (automatic placements will not trigger if you have an overlapping manual placement).

- Kevin Winter

AdWords API Team

[David Torres (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Omri,

Keywords performance report should not be used to report on placements, so please to rely on it to retrieve placements since it will not return the data you are looking for.

Best,

- David Torres - AdWords API Team

On Sunday, January 27, 2013 8:37:52 AM UTC-5, Omri Cohen wrote:

Hi Kevin,

Very clear explanation. Thanks!

I am in search for the best data source for automatic placements, specifically impressions, clicks, CTR, conversions, conv. rates. 

I read through your reply to Tomer and I understand that the best way to go about is using the Automatic Placements Performance report. This is despite the fact that impressions have a minimum threshold.

I also noticed that the Keyword Performance report also returns PlacementsUrl. Is that managed or automatic placement? The criteria here is the keyword so it should be the automatic placement, right? 

What information will I be losing if I decided to use the KW Performance instead of the Automatic placements? 

Thanks in advance!

Omri. 

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[David Torres (AdWords API Team)]

That's correct, placements returned in the Criteria report are only managed placements.

Best,

- David Torres - AdWords API Team

On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 2:04:36 AM UTC-5, Omri Cohen wrote:

Thanks David.

One more question please. What are the placements that are retrieved in the Criteria report. I assume those are managed placements. Is that correct?

[HeatherH]

Hello David,

Is it still true that the criteria report only returns managed placement data? The cost totals seem to indicate that I'm getting back both managed and automatic placements. I haven't applied any filters to the report.

Thanks,
Heather

[David Torres (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Heather,

It should return only managed placement data, but we had a temporary issue with the report and it was returning both for a bit, it should be working as expected right now. Let me know if that is not the case.

Best,

- David

[HeatherH]

Thank you for your reply, David. Do you know when this temporary issue started? Would it have been around 8/19? Might it also have affected other placement reports?

[HeatherH]

David, I continue to see all of my cost data, representing the following permutations of network/criteria types. While this is what I would like the report to return, I don't want to rely on the data as it is, if you are saying that this is not the intended behavior (and therefore might be changed).

AdNetworkType1   CriteriaType
Display Network    Keyword
Display Network    Placement
Display Network    User List
Display Network    Vertical
Search Network    Keyword

Thanks,
Heather