Are labels supported for negatives?

[Markus Heiden]

Hi,

we are adding labels to our negatives (NegativeAdGroupCriterion) when booking them since quite a while. Recently we added functionality to add labels to already booked negatives.  

Then we got some AdGroupCriterionError.CANNOT_ADD_LABEL_TO_NEGATIVE_CRITERION errors and ask ourselves where they stem from?

The error message is pretty clear, but the documentation of  the AdGroupCriterionService and NegativeAdGroupCriterion does not mention that labels are not supported for negatives (except for the documentation of the error), so I am a bit confused.

So: Are labels supported for negatives or not? If yes: Are there any restrictions?

Thanks in advance,

Markus

[Dannison Yao (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Markus,

Currently, labels are not supported in the NegativeAdGroupCriterion as implied here. It is only supported by using the AdGroupCriterionService.mutateLabel().

Let me know if you have further clarifications.

Regards,

Dannison

AdWords API Team

[Markus Heiden]

Hi Dannison,

I am not able to see that the "here" links says that labels are not supported for negatives.
I do not see any difference to the documentation of BiddableAdGroupCriterion, which supports labels.

Campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads all support assigning labels to them when creating them by simply setting the labels field. 

Why does negatives should behave different?

The linked documentation says that mutateLabel() is just needed, if adding labels to existing negatives.

I still do not know in which cases the AdGroupCriterionError.CANNOT_ADD_LABEL_TO_NEGATIVE_CRITERION is reported.

Regards,

Markus

[Dannison Yao (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Markus,

My apologies for the confusion on the provided documentation of the previous thread. 

Upon investigation, I was able to replicate your issue, encountering the error CANNOT_ADD_LABEL_TO_NEGATIVE_CRITERION. There seems to be a discrepancy in the documentation provided for NegativeAdGroupCriterion. Upon further investigation, the UI also does not show or allow the association of a label to a negative criterion such as keywords. However, it is allowed in the positive criterion. (See attachments for reference)

Let me double check with the team if indeed a documentation update is needed on this.

[Markus Heiden]

Hi Dannison,

what I am interested in most is, whether there is any way to add labels to negatives via the API or not. The UI is not important for me.

Regards,

Markus

[Dannison Yao (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Markus,

My apologies for the confusion. Adding labels via AdWords API is also not possible. The screenshots were just to support my point that labels in general are not supported by negatives, since the API only mirrors the general functionalities of the UI. 

Let me know if you have further clarifications.

[Markus Heiden]

Hi Danisson,

sorry for bugging you again. 

I noticed that labels on negatives ARE supported when creating a new negative via the API, by setting the "labels" field of "NegativeAdGroupCriterion". 

So we ended up with a lot labels that we cannot manage (Because we label all elements managed by our software on creation since years). 

Are there plans for supporting labels for negatives in the future?

We use the labels to distinguish elements managed by our software (labelled) from user created elements (unlabelled). Without labels we cannot do that reliably. So it would be a nice feature to have labels for all elements incl. negatives. Are there any chances for that?

Regards,

Markus

[Dannison Yao (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Markus,

Upon investigation, we are still not able to add labels in negatives even when the criterion is newly created via the API, which seems to be an expected behavior. Since you mentioned that labels worked on your end when negatives are newly created via the API, could you provide the complete SOAP request and response logs generated of your service call via Reply privately to author so I could investigate on this further?

I cannot provide a comment whether or not this will be supported. However, you may keep an eye on our blog for updates in the AdWords API.

Regards,

Dannison

AdWords API Team