Relationship between parent level criterion and its children criteria

[Harry]

Hi Ad Words API team,

When editing the audience of ad groups (see attached screenshot), if I select a parent criterion, will its associated children criteria AUTOMATICALLY be applied to the ad group as well? An example from the screenshot would be if I pick "Beauty & Wellness" then "Beauty Mavens" and "Frequently Visits Salons" are automatically applied to my ad group.  It'll be great if this is the case for a few reasons

• I don't need to select child-level criteria anyway if I want all criteria under the parent level
• if Google decides to add/remove child-level criteria it won't need to do any updates in my code

[Harry]

If this is not how criteria works then is there a way to achieve the goal of grouping similar criteria so that I only need to make one selection at the group level instead of having to select every criterion within it? 

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello Harry,

Thank you for reaching out. With regards to your concern, the criterion applied to the parent will not automatically be applied to the child ad group as well, even when they are included in the parent category. The criteria needs to be applied at the specific level. If you are looking to pull data using the Criteria Performance Report on child accounts, you will need to apply the criteria at the same level. You could refer to the targeting type guide for the basic properties for each target type. Also, you might find this guide useful for audience targeting settings via API. Let us know if you have any additional concerns.

Regards,
Nikisha Patel, Google Ads API Team

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[Harry]

Hi Nikisha,

Thanks a lot for the info!

As a following up question does a parent level audience include the audience of its children's audience? For example, "Beauty & Wellness" is the parent and "Beauty Mavens" is its child. Is the audience of "Beauty Mavens" included in the audience of "Beauty & Wellness"? I thought "Beauty & Wellness" is a superset and "Beauty Mavens" is a subset of it. But maybe that's not the case. 

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Harry,

I would recommend reaching out to our product support experts for further clarifications as they are the better equipped to assist you with your concerns related to audience targeting at parent and child level and the concepts related to this for better understanding. Feel free to reach out for any API related concerns.

Regards,
Nikisha Patel, Google Ads API Team

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[Harry]

Sounds good. Do you happen to know how to contact them? Feel free to private message me if that's proper. 

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello Harry,

You could reach out to them via help icon (?) on the top right corner of your Google Ads account (once logged in) or via posting your concerns here. Let us know if you have any additional concerns.

Regards,
Nikisha Patel, Google Ads API Team

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[Harry]

My questions have been answered. Thanks!