Enabled CampaignSharedSet which is attached to Removed SharedSet

[Tetiana Omelinska]

Hi!

We faced with such issue during working with the Ads Beta API - CampaignSharedSet is still Enabled and visible on UI among campaign's Negative Keyword lists while SharedSet to which it is applied is already Removed and doesn't exists on UI in  Negative Keyword lists on account level.

As far as I know it's impossible to remove SharedSet without unapplying campaigns from it. I tried to do it through the UI and through the API and it doesn't allow me to do it. But somehow it happens with one of our accounts (may be even not one).

If you need I can send you screen shots with examples in private.

Thank you in advance!

Tetiana

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Tetiana,

Thanks for reaching out to us! Yes, kindly share your CID as well as the detailed request and response logs from the API so that I can further look into it along with any additional screenshots that reflect the issue you are facing. Can you also clarify which accounts were able to remove SharedSets and what steps they followed in order to do so? 

Thanks,
Danica Calusin, Google Ads API Team

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[Tetiana Omelinska]

Hi Danica,

I replied you privately with detailed information about our issue.

Have you received my email?

BR,

Tetiana

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Tetiana,

Yes, I received your email - thanks for providing those details! Can you please clarify a few things for me? You mentioned the following: 

When we update rule, we unapply campaigns from SharedSet, remove SharedSet and create the new one with up to date rule.

Are you performing these actions within the API or the UI? If you are doing so with the API, can you please provide information on what services you are using and provide detailed logs of the requests/responses?


Thanks,
Danica, Google Ads API Team   

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[Google House Ads]

Hi Danica,

Flow which has been described before is automatic and we do it through the API.

To remove SharedSet we:

1. Fetch all campaigns which are applied to current SharedSet through the CampaignSharedSetService. Query looks like this:   "SELECT campaign_shared_set.status, shared_set.id, shared_set.type, shared_set.name, campaign.id, campaign.name, campaign.advertising_channel_type FROM campaign_shared_set WHERE campaign_shared_set.status != 'REMOVED' AND shared_set.type IN (NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS, NEGATIVE_PLACEMENTS) AND shared_set.id IN (6707919092)"
2. After we have all campaign ids which should be unapplied we can do it through the CampaignSharedSetService. Remove operations look like this remove: "customers/5482392845/campaignSharedSets/6465376725~6707919092", in case of successful operation API response is results {resource_name: "customers/5482392845/campaignSharedSets/6465135082~6707919092"}. Partial failure is enabled.
3. Since we can not provide mutate operation on video campaigns through Ads API, in case there are any video campaign applied to SharedSet we remove only all non-video campaigns and do not try to remove SharedSet (because it's forbidden to remove it if any campaigns are still applied). For such cases we have separate .gs scripts which unapply video campaigns for us. So, such SharedSet will be removed by our code only in the next iteration when .gs script will unapply video campaigns.
4. After unapplying ALL campaigns we can remove SharedSet through the SharedSetService - remove customers/5482392845/sharedSets/6707919092.

That is the logic which we have to operate with shared sets. If you'll need more details, please, contact me.

Thanks,

Tetiana

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Tetiana,

Thank you for providing the detailed description. I am checking on this internally within the team. Rest assured we will get back to you once we have more insight on this behavior. 

Regards,

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello,

Do you have the shared set ID for a shared set that is still in this incorrect state? I would like to take a look at a specific example to try to understand what might have happened in that case.

I'm also still not exactly clear on if this is causing an active issue for you, or if you just want to make sure that your account is in a "clean" state and you want to get rid of these old obsolete shared sets. Is this issue currently preventing you from moving forward with a project, or is it a cleanup effort?

Regards,
Mike, Google Ads API Team

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[Google House Ads]

Hi Danica,

In my private response to you there SharedSet/CampaignSharedSet ids on screen shots. 

Also, if you have access you can look to it on UI - https://ads.google.com/aw/keywords/negative?ocid=126702634&euid=74496858&__u=8985522442&uscid=32934978&__c=6766086322&authuser=0&subid=ua-uk-ha-aw-bk-c-bau%21o3~EAIaIQobChMIt4nHncf56AIViumaCh2sFQZYEAAYASAAEgK2d_D_BwE~56890479749~kwd-19650782074~1485457199~412067010. Here there are 7 duplicated CampaignSharedSets with such name structure GOOGLE_MKTG_NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS - EN - {datetime} - R16, all of them (except of the most current date) are CampaignSharedSets which are applied to Removed SharedSets.

We are interested in this issue because we frequently change negative keyword lists (we frequently create new SharedSets with new keyword criterions) and if the old CampaignSharedSet is still applied to campaigns both keywords from old SharedSet and new SharedSet are excluding from advertising which breaks our logic. If we know why such things happen may be we'll find some workaround for it.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello,

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't notice that screenshot when the case was escalated to me, and that helps to clarify the problem quite a lot.

I'm not sure how that shared set got into the state it is, since it appears to be from 2017 and our change history only goes back to January 2019 at the moment.

However, what you can do is whenever you want to apply a new shared set to a campaign, you can fetch all enabled shared sets for that campaign and disable them, ensuring that only the new one is enabled. This shouldn't be too much overhead, as even if you're applying to multiple campaigns you can do the fetch and the disable in bulk for the existing shared sets.

Does this workflow sound feasible?

[Tetiana Omelinska]

Hello,

Sorry for delay with answer.

We know that we can build workaround with CampaignSharedSets but we were interested in the cause of this issue.
As you could see on previous screenshots that there are ~7 duplicated CampaignSharedSets (which means they all are applied to Removed SharedSets) starting from 2017 year till 2019, so you should find history about the newer one. If it will help you I can provide you with their ids or even try to find such issue which happened in the current year (2020), it seems I saw some examples.

Will it be helpful for you to find the cause of this bug?

Regards,

Tetiana

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello,

Yes, having a recent example would help debug. I've looked around in your account but it's difficult to tell without context which ones are in the incorrect state.

[Tetiana Omelinska]

Hi Mike,

I found example of duplicating CampaignSharedSets in 2020 year in account 9988987723, campaign 6518371350.

That is how it looks on UI, only the most recent CampaignSharedSet should still exist - GOOGLE_MKTG_NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS - EN - 20200418-021841 - R16, as a result the other 2 are duplicated and it means they are applied to Removed SharedSets.

I'll give you info about this one GOOGLE_MKTG_NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS - EN - 20200111-011216 - R16 because it's the most recent one.

As you can see on the screen CampaignSharedSet is Enabled and is attached to SharedSet with id 6594099514 which has Removed status.

Hope it will help you to find out what can happened, because I saw a lot of such examples even in this year.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello,

I've spent some time trying to look into this example, but I'm still stumped. I'm going to reach out to some other members of my team to see if they've encountered anything like this before. I'll let you know what I find out.