some questions regarding drafts and experiments

[Imran Tufail]

Hi there!

I want to ask some questions regarding drafts and experiments.

1. Can i create the Drafts through batch job service ?

2. Can i create the experiments through batch job service ?

3. How i can get the statistics of an Experiment vs the original campaign (comparison) ?

4. After creating an experiment from a draft, Is further changes (suppose add more Ads) to this draft will reflect the changes to corresponding experiment ?

5. Is any way to modify the experiment directly (add new Ads etc) ?

Regards

Imran Tufail

[Vishal Vinayak (Adwords API Team)]

Hi Imran,

Please find my responses inline.

Can i create the Drafts through batch job service ? Can i create the experiments through batch job service ?

BatchJobService currently does not support drafts and experiments. A list of all the operations supported by BatchJobService is available here.

How i can get the statistics of an Experiment vs the original campaign (comparison) ?

Statistics linked to a trial associated with a campaign are always separate from the original campaign. You can use the Campaign Performance Report to retrieve stats related to a trail/campaign. You can use the field CampaignTrialType to diffentiate experiments from normal campaigns. More information is available here.  

After creating an experiment from a draft, Is further changes (suppose add more Ads) to this draft will reflect the changes to corresponding experiment ? Is any way to modify the experiment directly (add new Ads etc) ?

Once you create a trial from a draft campaign, it acts as an individual entity different from the draft. You can still modify some of the fields in the trial whereas certain others (such as status, name, startDate, endDate, budget etc.) are immutable, unlike a normal campaign. More information can be found in the Trials section of our Drafts & Experiments Guide.

Regards,

Vishal, AdWords API Team

[Imran Tufail]

Hi Vishal Vinayak,

Thank you for you reply, but i have still little confusion.. Suppose i create a trial from draft campaign, now if i add more Ads to draft campaign will it move these changes to the corresponding trail campaign or i have to create new trial to make these changes work ?

According to your answer what i understand is, it will not move these changes to running trail.

Best Wishes,

Imran Tufail

[Vishal Vinayak (Adwords API Team)]

Hi Imran,

That is correct. Any further changes to the draft would not be reflected in the trial, once the trial is created. As mentioned in our Drafts & Experiments Guide, when you create a trial from a draft, the trial works exactly like a normal campaign and is not associated with the draft (from which the trial got created) i.e. you no longer need to use the baseCampaignId to reference the Trial.

[Rotherhithe_m]

Can you help me too?

Consider that we have a draft campaign B, a copy of our campaign A.

1) These campaigns will be reported on our 'CAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT' where 

       a) campaignId will be a unique identifier,

       b) BaseCampaignId = campaignId for campaign A and both variables will be different when reporting for campaign B, that in this case will be the Id for campaign A,

       c) campaignTrialType will be 'BASE' for campaign A and 'DRAFT' for campaign B.

 This this correct?

2) With this setting, no other information about campaign B will be presented on for instance 'KEYWORDS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT' or 'ADGROUP_PERFORMANCE_REPORT'. Right?

Let's assume that we start now a trial with campaign B. We split 50% of traffic from A to B.

3)  In this context, is the campaignTrialType on  'CAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT' updated to 'Trail' for campaign B?

4) Will the performance for campaign B in 'trail' mode be reported on  'KEYWORDS_PERFORMANCE_REPORT' and 'ADGROUP_PERFORMANCE_REPORT' ?

[Vishal Vinayak (Adwords API Team)]

Hi,

Referring to your original queries:

1) That is correct. CampaignTrialType field in Campaign Performance Report contains the text DRAFT for a draft campaign and the text TRAIL for a trail campaign.

2) Could you please elaborate more on this point?

3) That is correct. 

4) Information regarding trial campaigns is available only in the Campaign Performance Report.

Our Campaign Drafts and Experiments guide has more details on this topic.

[Rotherhithe_m]

Hi Vishal,

thanks for your reply. I would like to query point 4. 

If that is the case why do both the Keyword and Ad Performance Reports contain both BaseCampaignId and CampaignId?

The documentation for both of the reports states:

BaseCampaignId

The ID of base campaign of trial campaigns. For regular campaigns, this is equal to CampaignId.

Why is this included in these reports if it is always equal to CampaignId?

Thanks !

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Greetings!

Thanks for catching that so we have an opportunity to correct this post. Yes, you can use the other reports as well when working with campaign drafts and experiments.

Cheers,

Nadine, AdWords API Team

[Artem Budishchev]

Hi all!

Sorry for hijacking the question. 

I have a small question: is it possible to also query for the traffic share set in the experiments in keyword performance reports (or any other report)?

I could find only the base campaign id field, but would also like to have a traffic share value like 0.5 for base campaign id and 0.5 for experiment for instance in the report.

Cheers,

Artem.

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

HI Artem,

Could you do me a huge favor and start a new thread for this question, please? It makes it so much easier for people to search and read later if they have the same kind of question.

Thanks!

Nadine, AdWords API Team

[Artem Budishchev]

Hi Nadine,

Sure no problem, I'll do it right away.

Cheers,

Artem.