Average Position 0.0

[Marcel Zemp]

What is the correct interpretation of having an average position of 0.0 even though Impressions > 0? Such records show up in an AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT in my case.

[Zweitze]

I've seen that behaviour on ads that have no real position. For instance, ads in the display network and in-stream video ads. And shopping ads too, because the user can apply his own sorting (like, on price, alphabetically on name, etc.etc.).

[Dhanya Sundararaju (AdWords API Team)]

Hi all,

The AveragePosition field gives the ad's position relative to other advertisers. The highest number is 1. Please refer this section of help center for better clarity. However, if you are getting 0.0 position in your reports via the API as well as via the UI, I would suggest you to post your question in the advertiser community forum as the product experts there are better equipped to answer product related questions. Else, please reply back with your client customer id and report definition so that I will be able to troubleshoot the discrepancy between UI and API.

Regards,

Dhanya, AdWords API Team

[Marcel Zemp]

Hi all

I see this in various types of campaigns: Search, Display and Shopping (Advertising Channel Type). But the main effect I see for Shopping campaigns.

If it would not make sense for a certain type (e.g. Shopping) should the API then not rather give back a NULL or "not applicable" value, i.e. "--" as it does for other fields?

Though, because it appears in all types of campaigns, it looks to me like a data quality issue plus a wrong "not applicable" data handling.

In addition, I've also posted this in the AdWords Forum (see here).

Regards Marcel

[Dhanya Sundararaju (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Marcel,

Thanks for posting in the advertiser community forum. With an answer from the product expert, we will be able to troubleshoot API side better, for this case. Incase you opt to come back to this thread, please reply with your client customer id and report definition. Please let me know if you have further questions.

[Marcel Zemp]

Indeed it looks like an inconsistent handling of the case "not applicable". Excerpt from the AdWords forum thread:

"For the Shopping case I agree and this is what I assumed as well. But in such a situation the report (pulled via API) should return "not applicable", i.e. n/a, NULL, or "--" (two dashes) as for other fields in the report. This is not a proper handling the "not applicable" case.

I also see Average Position = 0.0 for Search and Display campaigns. In those cases it always seems that the impressions = 0 but clicks > 0. So are these "just" data inconsistencies? Having clicks but no impressions and no average position in Search does not sound very reasonable to me."

I think 0.0 for average position is just the default value for the case "not applicable" for a numeric value on your side. Can you confirm this? Because then I can handle it properly again on our side in the database and convert the 0.0 values to NULL.

Are there other fields that have such a special "not applicable" case handling? Because for string fields it seems the reports always return "--" (two dashes) as per documentation. If this is the case, the documentation should probably expanded in order to cover this case as well.

[Dhanya Sundararaju (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Marcel,

From the AdWords API perspective, API would return the value that is available in the UI. Since the valid values for Average Position is > 1, you could consider 0.0 as "Not applicable" or "--" at your end. If you see discrepancy between UI and API, please let me know the details and I can take a closer look. Regarding your question about why average position is 0.0, could you also try contacting the AdWords product support using the help option in your AdWords UI?