Deleted ProductPartition criterion becomes a Product criterion - is this correct

[m...@kickstone.co.uk]

I have a shopping campaign with a tree containing a number of products explicitly listed by their offerId, which is all fine. As these products go out of stock/get discontinued, etc I automatically remove them from adwords which all looks good as well. However I've just noticed that these "removed" products appear as a Product criterion for the group with the conditions matching the Partition values.

Is this correct and expected? I'm guessing behind the scenes they are either stored in the old way or it is used to handle the stats on deleted entries, what happens if I re-add a product, does the Product criterion get replaced with the new ProductPartition or does it remain?

Thanks

[m...@kickstone.co.uk]

As a follow up to the above, it looks like the enabled products are also listed as Product criterion, it does indeed look as though google are mapping the new shoping partitions to the old style product entries behind the scenes, perhaps explains why the interface is so clunky and awkward, for example not allowing partial updates, etc

The next logical question is can I simply skip the messing around with trees/partitions and simply create the product mappings directly, I only ever create one to one mappings for a single product so this would be a lot easier - it may even allow me to make batch calls and turn on partial updates. My main concern is that google decide to implement the underlying mechanism differently and break it?

Please advise

[Chuck Reeves]

Instead of removing the partitions, why not just disable the bids on them ?  This way when they come back on you wont need to rebuild the whole tree

[m...@kickstone.co.uk]

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 3:15:21 PM UTC+1, Chuck Reeves wrote:

Instead of removing the partitions, why not just disable the bids on them ?  This way when they come back on you wont need to rebuild the whole tree

Sorry maybe an obvious question, but how do you disable the bids on them. I initially tried to do something like this before but couldn't get it to work, hence removing them.

Also you don't need to build the whole tree provided it is intact before and after you complete the operation so I am able to just add or delete a single product for example without touching the root or any other nodes.

John

[Sérgio Gomes (Shopping API Team)]

Hi John,

I'm not entirely sure if this is what you're asking, but if you simply set the bids to zero, that will disable any bidding on that BiddableAdGroupCriterion. This is, as Chuck suggested, a much better solution than removing and re-adding nodes to the partition tree as products go out of stock and back in.

Cheers,

Sérgio

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Sérgio Gomes

Developer Relations

Google UK Limited

Registered Office: Belgrave House, 76 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9TQ

Registered in England Number: 3977902

[m...@kickstone.co.uk]

If I set the bid to zero I get a BiddingErrors.INVALID_BID error. Do I need to set anything else? My original question however was is it correct that deleted partition objects are store in the underlying system as the old style Product criteria with suitable conditions set, which leads onto, is it possible to add these instead of dealing with the Partition space?

the soap log is below  for the SET request is below:

John

<operations>
                <operator>SET</operator>
                <operand xmlns:ns2="https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/cm/v201406" xsi:type="ns2:BiddableAdGroupCriterion">
                    <ns2:adGroupId>14664965219</ns2:adGroupId>
                    <ns2:criterion xsi:type="ns2:ProductPartition">
                        <ns2:id>41443081129</ns2:id>
                    </ns2:criterion>
                    <ns2:biddingStrategyConfiguration>
                        <ns2:bids xsi:type="ns2:CpcBid">
                            <ns2:bid>
                                <ns2:microAmount>0</ns2:microAmount>
                            </ns2:bid>
                        </ns2:bids>
                    </ns2:biddingStrategyConfiguration>
                </operand>
            </operations>

[Sérgio Gomes (Shopping API Team)]

Hi John,

After a bit of digging, I found out that you shouldn't need to make any changes at all to the partition tree, as the system should automatically avoid bidding on items that have been marked as out of stock. I'll double-check this for you, though, and try to find out whether there's any delay.

As for your original question, I'm afraid that PLA-style campaigns are going away during this month, so I would strongly advise against doing any development with them.

Cheers,

Sérgio

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Sérgio Gomes

Developer Relations

Google UK Limited

Registered Office: Belgrave House, 76 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9TQ

Registered in England Number: 3977902