Campaign cost in real-time

[Mark]

Hello,

We have an automated service which periodically checks the total cost of certain Campaigns, or rather, groups of Campaigns, and pause them once a certain amount has been spent. We rely on the AdWords API's CAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT to retrieve the cost of each campaign. The problem is, this report is not in real-time. We have had several cases where the cost increased heavily in the time span of just 30 minutes, and changed even after the Campaign had been paused. 

We use this mechanism to prevent groups of Campaigns from exceeding their "budget" (this is specific to our system, not the API). However, since reporting is not done in real-time, we tend to end up spending more than the allocated "budget". 

Is there any way around this? Could be the Google Ads API's Metrics cost_micros a better alternative, or is that delayed, too?

Thank you,

Mark 

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately, the data in both Google Ads API and AdWords API run into an issue of data freshness, where the data will not be up to date. Some fields are only updated once a day and some can be delayed up to 3 hours. 

Regards,
Anthony
Google Ads API Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5001UODRzW:ref