More questions about PLACEHOLDER_FEED_ITEM_REPORT

[Zweitze]

Hello,

I'm somewhat underwhelmed by the docs on PLACEHOLDER_FEED_ITEM_REPORT. So please help me on this subject:

1. Does field PlaceholderType denote the type of the ad extension, with 1 for site links and 2 for Call extensions? What are the values of the other six ad extension types?

2. Field AttributeValues appears to contain the attributes of the ad extension.
2a. Are the values indeed separated by a semicolon and a space ("; ", without the double quotes)? What happens when a value contains the same character sequence?
2b. For site link extensions the field AttributeValues appears to contain "<site link text>; <site link url>", for call extensions the field appears to contain "<telephone number>; <country>; true; false; -1". What are the meanings of the last three sub fields? What happens with site links of three lines, which are in beta? What about the remaining ad extension types?

3. Ad extensions can be linked to campaigns or ad groups. How can you whether a certain ad extension is a campaign-level extension or adgroup-level extension? Note: I thought that a campaign ad extension would report empty ad groups in the field AdGroupName. This appears to be not the case, when you include AdGroupName in the report, this field is repeated for every ad group in the campaign.

4. How can I get ad extensions which have 0 impressions? Parameter IncludeZeroImpressions appears not to work. I use the following fields: AttributeValues-Campaign-Impressions-PlaceholderType. Maybe one of those fields prevents zero impression results?

5. Why must I include at least one "result" field? In the above definition, if you leave out Impressions you get no results at all!


Thanks in advance!

[David Torres (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Zweitze,

Please find my responses inline.

Best,

- David Torres - AdWords API Team

On Monday, July 29, 2013 12:15:37 PM UTC-4, Zweitze wrote:

Hello,

I'm somewhat underwhelmed by the docs on PLACEHOLDER_FEED_ITEM_REPORT. So please help me on this subject:

I'm sorry to hear that, please do share with us how would you improve these docs. I'll certainly try to work with my team to improve them if needed.

 

1. Does field PlaceholderType denote the type of the ad extension, with 1 for site links and 2 for Call extensions? What are the values of the other six ad extension types?

Yes, it does represents the ad extension type. Feeds only support sitelinks, app and call extension at the moment. Other extension types will still be reported in the AD_EXTENSIONS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT. See the lists of available placeholder types and ID in this appendix. Keep in mind that PlaceholderType field is a segment type of field, it comes from the mapping of an item to a campaign, therefore you can't use it for structural reports.

 

2. Field AttributeValues appears to contain the attributes of the ad extension.
2a. Are the values indeed separated by a semicolon and a space ("; ", without the double quotes)? What happens when a value contains the same character sequence?

There is currently a bug about properly escaping this separator, I recommend you using the FeedItemService instead to the feed item structural data at this moment.

 

2b. For site link extensions the field AttributeValues appears to contain "<site link text>; <site link url>", for call extensions the field appears to contain "<telephone number>; <country>; true; false; -1". What are the meanings of the last three sub fields? What happens with site links of three lines, which are in beta? What about the remaining ad extension types?

As I said, please do not rely on this AttributeValues and its format at the moment.

 

3. Ad extensions can be linked to campaigns or ad groups. How can you whether a certain ad extension is a campaign-level extension or adgroup-level extension? Note: I thought that a campaign ad extension would report empty ad groups in the field AdGroupName. This appears to be not the case, when you include AdGroupName in the report, this field is repeated for every ad group in the campaign.

Campaign[Id|Name], AdGroup[Id|Name] are segment type of fields in this report. You'll get always an ad group and a campaign in a row that has gotten impressions.

 

4. How can I get ad extensions which have 0 impressions? Parameter IncludeZeroImpressions appears not to work. I use the following fields: AttributeValues-Campaign-Impressions-PlaceholderType. Maybe one of those fields prevents zero impression results?

If you use only FeedId, FeeditemId, AttributeValues, Status then you'll get zero impression rows.

 

5. Why must I include at least one "result" field? In the above definition, if you leave out Impressions you get no results at all!

When you include segment field like the campaign then you must accompany the definition with a metric or you would get no rows.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Zweitze]

Thanks for the answers!

>I'm sorry to hear that, please do share with us how would you improve these docs.

First of all, please review the report field table. You mentioned some fields are segment fields, note that the report field table does NOT list them as segment fields.

But on a higher level, please document the structure of this matter. All I have to do is retrieve all ad extensions and the place (campaign or ad group) where they are found in the account. With legacy ad extensions, this could all be done with the CampaignAdExtensionService, but now we need five services. I hoped to circumvent this with a structure report, but no luck.
Well, five services it is. Unlike the web interface, in the API the word Ad Extension is no longer used, instead new words are introduced: feeds, feed items and placeholders. These are very generic English words but an explanation is not supplied. Now every developer has to figure out the relation between feeds, feed items, feed place holders, feed associations, feed mappings and feed association functions.

Apart from the explanation of the concepts, I'd like to see sample code that, given an ad with ad id 123 in ad group 456 of account 789, show a complete list of all ad extensions that may appear below that ad. I know that sample code exists to create new site links, but that appears to be a very isolated use case.


Thanks!

[Oliver]

I really hope we get a lot more clarifications and code examples on how sitelinks are retrieved, modified and deleted.  The new 'feed' model is so generic it is taking a very long time to understand and upgrade our code.  What we used to do in 50 lines of code is now getting done with 450 lines of code.  Maybe the API team can introduce some utility/helper classes that can speed up the development/learning curve?

Oliver

[David Torres (AdWords API Team)]

Thanks Zweitze and Oliver,

We are really taking your feedback seriously and looking for the best solutions in terms of documentation, client libraries and the API itself. Thanks for your patience.

Best,

- David 

[chandu polimini]

Hi ,

 Could you please me in  details how to get the account level ,campaign level and adgroup level call out extensions using PLACEHOLDER_FEED_ITEM_REPORT through API .

[Danial Klimkin]

Please see:

  https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/guides/extension-settings

This is a very old thread and I am closing it. Please start a new one should you have further questions.

-Danial, AdWords API Team.