Campaign start date not always consistent between AdWords SOAP API and Google Ads GRPC API

[Alexandre Lord]

When fetching campaigns using the same credentials against both APIs some accounts return campaigns with Start Date 1-off. (ex: AdWords 2018-02-27, Google Ads 2018-02-28)

I can find a reference to this issue in the forum (Campaign StartDate not consistent between AdWords API and Google Ads API) but it seems to not have reached a conclusion.

Is this a known issue?

Any work around?

Is this an expected behavior change when fetching a campaign from an account using OAuth against an MCC?

[Alexandre Lord]

A redacted dump of the AdWords SOAP request/response and Google Ads GRPC request/response can be provided if necessary.

[Alexandre Lord]

Relevant data from the responses

<startDate>20180227</startDate>

<endDate>20371230</endDate>

vs

start_date {value: "2018-02-28"}

end_date {value: "2037-12-30"}

On Tuesday, October 22, 2019 at 1:07:01 PM UTC-4, Alexandre Lord wrote:

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Alexandre,

Thank you for writing to us. The discrepancy could be either the campaign start date is shifting on us, or the customer you are logged in might be having an effect. To clarify this better, could you please try running both the Adwords API request and the Google Ads API request within 1 hour of each other. This way we can catch if something is changing in the campaign. If they are the same, then it must be that the campaign start shifted between your calls. If they are different, could you please share the could you please share the complete request and response logs along with the client customer id for me to investigate this further? Also, please share the report generated via Google Ads API for me to assist you better. Please use Reply privately to author option while sharing the details,

Regards,
Nikisha Patel, Google Ads API Team

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[Alexandre Lord]

Request/Response dump sent in private.

Keeping to comment public so any one having the same issue can track the conversation.

We are testing our migration by fetching the campaigns from both AdWords and Google Ads API and comparing the results (delay of ~0.1-2 seconds between the calls). Looking at our logs we did 151 733 calls to fetch campaigns in the last 24 hours and got 3 611 mis-matched start dates over the same period. Looking at the 24 hours before that matches and we see that it's the same campaign ids with the same date drift.

We have a large mix of account linked directly, linked through MCCs, linked through chains of MCCs, in various time zones.

We do not observe any drift when fetching statistics segmented by date on those accounts. (Impression count/Convertions/... matches by dates correctly)

We welcome any hints on how we can mitigate this.

Thank you.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Greetings!

This was escalated up to me to take a look. It is indeed odd, and you did an excellent job of proving what's happening. I've escalated an internal issue to see if we can get a resolution soon. Feel free to ping this thread if you don't hear from me soon.

Thanks,
Nadine Sundquist, Google Ads API Team

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[Alexandre Lord]

Pinging the thread. Any news on this issue?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Greetings!

Yes, I do have an update on this. It's an interesting reason. In the Google Ads API, it's using the time zone of the login-customer-id when displaying data and not the account time zone.

The manager account is in New York, and the child account is in the Los Angeles time zone. So, when you see the campaign start time or end time, it's in the time zone of New York, which is why it appears to be on a separate day since the campaign start/end time was created in the Los Angeles time zone.

I hope that makes sense. Time zone magic can be tough on the brain.

Best,
Nadine, Google Ads API Team 

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[Alexandre Lord]

Thank you for digging into this. That's an interesting one since we don't have hours on those date.

I assume they are stored as midnight in the timezone of the account running the campaign.

The only odd part my brain is not getting around is that the report date segmentation matches across both APIs (impression, conversions, ...). I would have expected that if we see a timezone drift for start and end dates we would have some amount of impressions drifting around in the report date segmentation.

I may be wrong but it would seem from my limited tests that

* Campaign Start/End dates are returned in the Login Customer timezone

* Date segmentation may be based on the Customer timezone

Am I getting this rigth (or I may just have been lucky in my tests not to have statistic events fall in the gap between the 2 timezones)?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello,

Yes, it is stored as midnight of the time zone of the account. 

As for your two assumptions. Yes, that could be possible. I'll go double-check on that for you.

Regards,

[Alexandre Lord]

Any news on this issue?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Greetings!

Yes, your two assumptions are correct. It is an inconsistency that is confusing, and it appears that this happens in both the UI and the API. I'm working with the overall product team to try to see if we can make that consistent in the future. I don't think that would happen any time soon because a decision like that takes time, so please keep in mind this difference for the time being.

Thanks,

[Alexandre Lord]

Thank you. We will adapt our code accordingly.

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hi, I had this same issue, did a few tests and got back the expected start/end date, but two exceptions occurred:

1. Created a campaign in a UTC client account that belongs to a UTC-4 master account wit start date 2021-06-16 and end date 2021-07-31 and got those same dates. If I check the conversions:

• 2021-06-16 00:00 UTC = 2021-06-15 20:00 UTC-4
• 2021-07-31 23:59 UTC = 2021-07-31 19:59 UTC-4

Then it shouldn't return the same value for start date.

2. Created a campaign in the same client account than 1 with start date 2021-06-16 and end date 2021-06-29 but this time via the Google Ads API, and got the same dates while querying them. The corresponding conversions:

• 2021-06-16 00:00 UTC = 2021-06-15 20:00 UTC-4
• 2021-06-29 23:59 UTC = 2021-06-29 19:59 UTC-4

The third time I tried this with a new campaign, the start and end date came back with the correct timezone conversion. Should I take something else into account?

Thank you in advance.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello Estanislao,

That's super interesting; you do have a great attention to detail to notice that. I looked into this. Back in December 2019 on this thread, I mentioned that some time in the future there may be a change. It looks like this may possibly be getting rolled out right now. When something gets rolled out, it can be a slow process where only a certain percentage of requests have the new behavior to make sure it's behaving as expected. That could explain the temporary inconsistency. I'm now checking to see if this is indeed the case. If you don't hear from me soon, feel free to ping this thread.

[Pierre-Luc Dupont]

Hi, I would like to know if there is any update on this ticket ?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Greetings!

It appears that my hunch was correct. There is a rollout happening to make everything consistent, and it should be fully ramped up soon. The change is in the process of rolling out. This way querying for values like the campaign start date will be consistent at the manger account level and the client account level.

Regards,

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello,

It looks like everything has been fully ramped up. Could you please confirm if everything is consistent now across your requests? 

Thanks,

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello,

I tried some of my previous tests getting the start and end date in the API and the UI and I got the same inconsistent results. I also tried creating a new campaign and getting those dates, same issue.

Regards,

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello Estanislao,

Could you please send me some samples of the campaign IDs and/or request IDs where you see this happening?

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello Nadine,

This is the request:

SELECT campaign.advertising_channel_sub_type,campaign.network_settings.target_content_network,campaign.geo_target_type_setting.negative_geo_target_type,campaign.manual_cpc.enhanced_cpc_enabled,campaign_budget.name,campaign.serving_status,campaign.end_date,campaign.tracking_url_template,campaign_budget.explicitly_shared,campaign.target_cpa.target_cpa_micros,campaign_budget.delivery_method,campaign.frequency_caps,campaign.target_roas.target_roas,campaign.geo_target_type_setting.positive_geo_target_type,campaign.target_spend.cpc_bid_ceiling_micros,campaign.url_custom_parameters,campaign.shopping_setting.enable_local,campaign.status,campaign_budget.amount_micros,campaign_budget.status,campaign.bidding_strategy,campaign.start_date,campaign.final_url_suffix,campaign.network_settings.target_partner_search_network,campaign_budget.reference_count,campaign.name,campaign.real_time_bidding_setting.opt_in,campaign.tracking_setting.tracking_url,campaign.shopping_setting.campaign_priority,campaign.shopping_setting.sales_country,campaign.network_settings.target_google_search,campaign_budget.id,campaign.dynamic_search_ads_setting.domain_name,campaign.bidding_strategy_type,campaign.dynamic_search_ads_setting.language_code,campaign.network_settings.target_search_network,campaign.advertising_channel_type,campaign.shopping_setting.merchant_id,campaign.id,campaign.experiment_type FROM campaign WHERE campaign.id IN (13743762394) AND campaign.status IN (ENABLED,REMOVED,PAUSED) AND campaign.advertising_channel_type IN (DISPLAY,SEARCH,SHOPPING) AND campaign.experiment_type IN (BASE)

And the campaign IDs that return wrong dates:

• 13743762394
• 13742968484
• 13538308077

The only one that we tested and returned a correct date is: 13541886854

Thank you in advance,

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello Estanislao,

Thank you for the additional information. I'm taking a look into it. I need to trace this through our logs.

Regards,

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello,

I've followed up and been able to confirm that this is happening in both the UI and the API. It looks like the end date is the same, though, which I find interesting. Usually, if one is a day off, the other will also be off by the amount of time. Unfortunately, we've reached the US holidays, and some people will not be back in the office until Wednesday as they are on vacation. I'll follow up on this on Wednesday to find out what is the root cause.

Thanks again for all this information. It really was quite helpful.

Cheers,

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello,

 I think the end date is the same because it's saved at 23.59 while the start date at 00.00. I'll wait for more information, thank you!

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello,

Thanks for following up with that. With the holidays this week in the US, it's difficult to reach a few key people. We have made progress on finding where in the code changes could be made to adjust this. I'll keep you updated on the progress.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello,

I was able to follow up with a few folks. It appears there's some additional work that needs to be get done to get the dates to align. Right now, it looks likely that the UI will be updated first followed by the API.

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hi Nadine,

Any news? Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello Estanislao,

Thanks for checking in. It appears that making this change in the API is a bit more difficult than originally thought. Some of my fellow engineers are at the drawing board trying to figure out how that would work. I do want to set the expectation that due to the difficulty of the change, it may take a bit of time to come to a solution. 

Regards,

[Pierre-Luc Dupont]

Considering that it is blocking us to migrate from the AdWords API, do you have an ETA for the delivery ? 

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello Pierre-Luc,

Thank you for conveying the urgency. I'm still working with folks here to figure out the best path forward on this. The Google Ads UI and the Google Ads API used to behave in the exact same way until super recently, so it wasn't considered a blocker for migration since it was intentional across all new interfaces. It appears that the Google Ads UI may have made a recent change that made it similar to the AdWords API, so that completely changes the picture, and we need to figure out what to do about that going forward. Since this is a recent change, I don't have an ETA, yet.

In the meantime, luckily campaign start date is not in all queries, so I would recommend working on migrating the rest over. If you can take into account the current behavior while migrating, then you could migrate functionality with campaign start date as some other developers have done. As soon as I have further information, I'll provide an update.

Cheers,

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hi, 

Any new update on this?

Thanks,

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello,

Thanks for checking in. I've been checking in on this daily. It's been labeled with higher priority, but we're still looking for a solution. 

Best,

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello,

Any updates on this? Thanks.

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello Estanislao,

Thanks for checking in. It looks like we may have found a possible solution. My teammate assigned to it is looking into giving that solution a try.

Cheers,

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello Nadine,

Thanks for the previous update. Any news on this?

Thanks,

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Greetings!

I pinged the internal thread that is tracking this. It got a little quiet over the US holidays, but I do see that it is moving forward. I don't have an exact date, yet.

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello,

Any updates on this?

Thanks in advance.

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Estanislao,

No updates yet, we are still discussing the options for fixing this issue. 

Cheers
Anash

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[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello,

Any updates on this?

Thanks in advance.

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Estanislao,

No updates at this time, we are still discussing the best way to address this issue. I'll keep you posted as I hear from the teams.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Estanislao,

We are planning to expose additional timestamps that help you resolve the campaign start and end dates better. I expect this to come in a future API version, so please watch out for our blog / release notes for updates.

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Thank you a lot!

[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello again,

We've switched to v9 but still the error persists, and there are no additional fields that would let us calculate the correct dates. Any idea when/which version will provide us with this fix?

Thank you in advance,

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Estanislao,

Thanks for getting back to us.

Could you provide us with the complete request and response logs with the request-id generated with Google Ads API v9 via the 'Reply privately to author' option, so our team can better check?

Regards,
Reminder: Share your feedback about the Google Ads (AdWords) API! Take the 2021 Google Ads API and AdWords API Annual Survey

Yasar Google Ads API Team

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[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hello,

I've just sent the full logs for creation and query. As you can see the start date differs in one day. Same happens for the end date with other timezones. If you have any other questions please refer to the previous messages in this thread.

I need to know if this will be fixed any time soon or if this bug is not a priority, because it dates back to October 2019. 

Thanks and regards,

Estanislao Ledesma

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Estanislao,

Thank you for the details you have provided to our team.

I have once more raised the issue with the campaign start_date to the rest of our team. We'll provide an update once we receive feedback on the issue.

Best regards,

Peter Laurence Napa Oliquino Google Ads API Team

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[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Estanislao,

Thanks for your patience on this. This is a known issue that is currently being worked on and will be resolved in the near future.

Regards,
Matt
Google Ads API Team

Reminder: Share your feedback about the Google Ads (AdWords) API! Take the 2021 Google Ads API and AdWords API Annual Survey
 

Matt Google Ads API Team

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[Estanislao Ledesma]

Hi Matt,

Okay, please let me know when you have any news on this.

Regards,

Estanislao

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Estanislao,

You may also keep an eye on our blog post as our team is posting news and updates about Google Ads API.

Regards,

Ernie John Blanca Tacata Google Ads API Team

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[Diego Morello]

Hi all,

Any updates on this issue? Just in case, is the fix scheduled for API v10?

Please take into account that this bug is a blocker for us (and probably everyone using Google Ads API) to safely migrate our platform and keep our business running. Also, please notice that it was initially reported in October 2019, and more than 2 years after it has not been fixed.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Thanks in advance,

Diego

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Diego,

Thank you for raising your follow up to my team.

So that I can raise your follow up to our team as well, would you be able to provide the complete SOAP request and response logs generated in the AdWords API and complete request and response logs with request ID and request header generated on your end for Google Ads API where we can see the discrepancies?

You can provide it via Reply privately to author option. If this option is not available, then send it instead on this email address googleadsa...@google.com.