Audience lists don't get populated

[Dmitry Ovod-Marchuk]

Hi,

I was going to launch dynamic remarketing for a number of websites, and I created a number of audience lists using API for this purpose. But I noticed a really strange problem. None of my lists created via API gets populated. I also tried to set up the same lists manually, but it sometimes worked, and sometimes not. Most of the lists still stay empty.

Customer ID: 976-956-6773 (scaler....@gmail.com).

Could you please check the following lists?

ID 441286117 — "Scaler / product viewers at biotulin.de (manual)") — I created this list manually

ID 441994128 — "Scaler / product viewers at biotulin.de") — Created via API

None of these two get populated. Why are they empty? 

ID 440835967 — "(3) Scaler / product viewers at by.holiday.by" — this is one is created manually, and it WORKS!

ID 441995202 — "Scaler / product viewers at by.holiday.by" — Created via API

Why is one the lists empty, while another gets populated? Their configuration is completely the same, so they should populate the same amount of users, right?

If you need more details — please let me know.

Thanks!

[Shwetha Vastrad (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dmitry,

If the user lists created either through the API or the UI have the same parameters, they should be populated in a similar manner. Since some of the user lists created in the UI are not populated as well, this doesn't look like it is specific to AdWords API. I suggest that you post your question in the AdWords community forum as they are better equipped to answer this question. 

Regards,

Shwetha, AdWords API Team.

[Dmitry Ovod-Marchuk]

Hi Shwetha,

In fact the list created via API is the one that doesn't get populated.

ID 440835967 — "(3) Scaler / product viewers at by.holiday.by" — Created manually, and it gets populated

ID 441995202 — "Scaler / product viewers at by.holiday.by" — Created via API, doesn't get populated

Could you please check it what's wrong?

Thanks.

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dmitry,

Could you please look at the Caveats section of the Remarketing guide to make sure that your list doesn't fall under one of the caveats? For example, the list size will continue to say 0 until there are at least 1000 addresses. Another thing is that it can take several hours for the list to populate after you've uploaded the emails. Hopefully, one of the caveats will explain the mystery. If not, feel free to get back to me.

Thanks,

Nadine, AdWords API Team

[Dmitry Ovod-Marchuk]

Hi Nadine,

Thank you for the reference. It didn't help though.

1. Of course we've been waited far more than 72 hours.

2. The size of the empty list (441995202) should be as big as non-empty one (440835967) as they have the same configurations and were created in the same moment. The non-empty list is bigger than 1000 users at the moment.

Could you please have a look by yourself?

[Thanet Knack Praneenararat (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Dmitry,

I also looked into your user lists and found that they look the same except for ad group targeting settings, which shouldn't affect the user list membership.

I'm contacting the engineering team and will get back to you when we have more updates on this.

Best,

Thanet, AdWords API Team

[Dmitry Ovod-Marchuk]

Hi Thanet,

We look forward to feedback from engineering team.

Thank you.

[Thanet Knack Praneenararat (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Dmitry,

Sorry for keeping you waiting.

It seems the user list created by API got populated since Nov 22 as well?

Could you please confirm this?

Cheers,

Thanet, AdWords API Team

[Thanet Knack Praneenararat (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dmitry,

Here's what we've found out about the list created via the API:

It was created via API on 11/7, where there's no membership lifespan set.

Then it was updated via UI on 11/13, where it set membership lifespan to 30-days, and turn the option Include past users who match these rules on, which starts to make it pre-populated with 30-day back data.

(Please note that this option is not settable via the API)

But the size is still not populated after 11/13. It might be caused by its rule definition.

Later its rule definition was updated via API on 11/22, then the list got populated.

In short, your two lists were originally not equivalent but they became so through a series of modification of rules and options.

That's why they look the same now.

Cheers,

Thanet, AdWords API Team