Downloading Campaigns reports from multiple Clients managed by an MCC

[Pedro Devoto]

Hi. I'm developing an app for an MCC. We need to download YESTERDAY reports on an hourly basis. Why on an hourly basis? Because we work with multiple APIs and it is the best approach we found to avoid possible errors and to be sure that we are getting the most up to date consolidated information. The problem is that we have around 160 managed clients (although most of them are inactive), and our Basic access gives us a limit of 1,000 reports per day. So we would be downloading around 160 reports per hour, giving a total of 3,840 per day. 

At first I thought that I might query each managed client's campaigns to see if any of them are active, before downloading the report, to minimize the amount of reports downloaded. But then I realised that the fact that a managed client has all its campaigns inactive does not mean that they were inactive all along yesterday. 

My question is what is my best approach? Is the 1,000 reports per day limit that hard/strict? Maybe it does not count if I download the same report over and over again? Or maybe it is a limit per client ID? 

I know I can also apply for a Standard access token. Would that solve my problem?

Thank you

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hi Pedro,

Since some data fields only update once a day, I do not think it will be necessary to run a report for each account every hour. I would suggest filtering your reports as much as possible, such as adding the predicate Impressions > 0.

However, if you still decide to run the reports hourly, my best recommendation is to apply for a Standard Access token.

Cheers,

Anthony

AdWords API Team