Shopping Performance Report API and mapping of products and ads

[paran]

I'm wondering how I can map a product returned by the shopping performance report to the ad it belongs to. 

For example let's assume that I have created a shopping campaign with 1 ad group, I then upload 2 different product feeds. In the adwords UI under "Ads & Extension" I will see 2 rows like this:

Ad             Ad group         Status        Ad type      Clicks .... etc
Shopping Ad    My ad group      Approved      Product Ad   123

Shopping Ad    My ad group      Approved      Product Ad   321

Now if i use the Ad Performance Report i will be able to distinguish the 2 by looking at the Ad ID field (name will be the same: 'Product listing ad; Promotion: '), but I won't be able to get details at product level with this report(?). 

However when if I use shopping performance report I can get the product details but they only have a reference to the Ad Group ID, as far as I can tell there's no mapping to the ad?

Is there any reason why the shopping performance report cannot return the ad id together with the products (i.e. it's intentional by design)?

[Dhanya Sundararaju (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Par,

I understand your concern. Shopping Performance Report via the API corresponds to shopping campaign statistics aggregated at the product level. When it is aggregated at the product partition level, you can use the Product Partition Report which conforms to the Product Group Report via the UI. Unfortunately, both do not have Ad level stats. 

Regards,
Dhanya, AdWords API Team

[paran]

I have a follow up question regarding the shopping performance api. I noticed that the Conversions metric is not compatible with the Product Title attribute. Why is that?

For example I can do a report with [Offer Id, Conversions, Impressions] and another one with [Offer Id, Product Title, Impressions] but not allowed to do [Offer Id, Conversions, Product Title, Impressions] together.

Since I can do them separately I can always map the product title to the request that got the conversions by using the Offer Id anyway right? Or am I missing something here?

[Dhanya Sundararaju (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Par,

Yes, we do have certain fields which are not compatible with other fields when used in the same report via the UI. Same applies to API as well. They have also been mentioned in each field description. For example, Shopping-performance-report#conversions. Your approach is correct in terms of using different reports and then combining them at your end. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[paran]

But in the Adwords UI i can choose conversions as a column in the product list (which also include product title by default). And if I can figure out which conversion belongs to which product title by calling the shopping performance report twice then why are they considered incompatible?

[Michael Cloonan (AdWords API Team)]

Hello,

I am not an expert on how the AdWords UI generates its reports, but this restriction is enforced on the backend for technical reasons. The UI may be built in such a way that it fills in this information from another source for that specific report type, or some other workaround.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but those fields are not compatible in the AdWords API.

Regards,

Mike, AdWords API Team