Adding life events targeting to display campaign using java sdk not possible

[Andreas Gabor]

Hi!

I'm not able to add a LifeEvent as targeting to a display campaign using the java sdk. Looking at the Audience Management documentation and source code of the sdk it seems the only way to do it is using Audience, which is supported only for Performance Max and Discovery campaigns, not Display campaigns.

For Display campaigns, targeting is supported via Audience Segments using User Lists. Unfortunately Life Events can't be added there. 

There's no way to add it directly to the AdGroupCriterion either (like with UserInterests or Topics). Which is surprising, as when adding a LifeEvent to a campaign using the UI, there is actually an AdGroupCriterion created looking like this:

ad_group_criterion { 

  resource_name: "customers/xx/adGroupCriteria/xx~xx"

  status: ENABLED

  type: LIFE_EVENT

  system_serving_status: ELIGIBLE

  approval_status: APPROVED

  criterion_id: xx

  ad_group: "customers/xx/adGroups/xx"

  negative: false 

  display_name: "95026"

  primary_status: ELIGIBLE

}

But there's no way creating another AdGroupCriterion like this.

Cheers

Andreas

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

Thank you for reaching out to the Google Ads API support team.

I understand that you are unable to add a LifeEvent as targeting a display campaign. I suggest you go through this audience documentation as it has the part on how to create audiences with life event audience segments. Also, Audiences can be targeted in multiple ways depending on the campaign type. Refer to this documentation to set up audience targeting.

If you face any errors, provide us with the complete API logs (request and response with request-id and request header) generated at your end to assist you better.

If you are using a client library and haven't enabled the logging yet, I would request you to enable logging for the specific client library that you are using. You can refer to the guides Java, .Net, PHP, Python, Ruby or Perl to enable logging at your end. For REST interface requests, you can enable logging via the curl command by using the -i flag.

This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!5004Q02vGxdi:ref" (ADR-00285259)

Thanks,
 

Google Ads API Team

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[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

Thank you for reaching out to the Google Ads API support team.

I understand that you are unable to add a LifeEvent as targeting a display campaign. I suggest you go through this audience documentation as it has the part on how to create audiences with life event audience segments. Also, Audiences can be targeted in multiple ways depending on the campaign type. Refer to this documentation to set up audience targeting.

If you face any errors, provide us with the complete API logs (request and response with request-id and request header) generated at your end to assist you better.

If you are using a client library and haven't enabled the logging yet, I would request you to enable logging for the specific client library that you are using. You can refer to the guides Java, .Net, PHP, Python, Ruby or Perl to enable logging at your end. For REST interface requests, you can enable logging via the curl command by using the -i flag.

You can send the details via Reply privately to the author option, or direct private reply to this email.

[Andreas Gabor]

Hi,

thanks for your reply. 

Regarding your first documentation link:

Audience targeting is supported for Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns. 

Hence this does not help with a display campaign. 

Regarding your second documentation link, it only describes how to target when using Performance Max or Demand Gen campaigns. Again, nothing for display campaigns.

I can't give you any API logs as the Java SDK doesn't offer me any ways to create a request to add LifeEvent targeting to a display campaign.

Cheers 

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

I understand that you are unable to add the life_event targeting to the display campaign. I would recommend that you fetch the life_event.availabilities field from life_event resource to check the availability information of the life event for display campaign.

Hope this helps. If you have any more queries, please feel free to get back to us.

[Andreas Gabor]

It's not about the availability of a single life event but about the ability to actually use the java sdk to add a life event to a display campaign. The sdk only allows you to use an Audience to add a life event to a campaign. But this is not supported for display campaigns. It seems the functionality is just missing from the sdk.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

Kindly note that adding life events using campaigns is not yet supported in the Google Ads API. I will raise a request to add this feature to become available in the Google Ads API. However, I cannot provide a scheduled timeline for its availability of this feature in the Google Ads API. So, I would recommend you to follow our blog post and release notes for future updates.

[Andreas Gabor]

Thanks for the result. I'll keep an eye on the release notes, in the meantime I'd suggest making a note in the documentation. To me it reads like this is supported.