Some questions regarding multiple final URLs

[Dorian Kind]

Hello there,

From the API documentation we know that the final URL fields of Ad objects ("finalUrls", "finalMobileUrls", "finalAppUrls") are lists.

I'm having a hard time understanding how ad serving works if there are multiple final URLs for a given ad, for example, how does Adwords choose which final URL to use for the "lpurl" parameter?

Additionally, is there currently any way that one can add multiple final URLs in the web interface, or is this just possible using the API?

And lastly, it's mentioned that in reports, values for the final URL field for a given creative are separated by semicolons. But what if the URLs themselves contain semicolons (for example, they can be used in place of "&" as the item separator in query strings), are they going to be escaped?

Thanks for your feedback and best regards,
Dorian 

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dorian,

AdWords allows multiple final URLs specifically for the use case where you are not including lpurl in your tracking template. For example, if your tracking template is directing traffic to a tracker that redirects some traffic to one URL and other traffic to another URL, e.g., for a landing page experiment.

If you do have multiple final URLs and you are using a tracking template that includes lpurl, AdWords will simply pass the first final URL for the lpurl parameter value. Also, if you have multiple final URLs and you are not using a tracking template at all, AdWords will simply serve the ads with the first final URL as the destination URL.

Currently, the UI does not support adding multiple final URLs, although you can view additional final URLs by hovering over the callout to the right of the Final URL entry field, at which point you'll see an Additional final URLs tooltip that shows the 2..n final URLs.

Regarding reports, the semicolon in your CreativeFinalUrls will not be escaped. However, it does appear that there will be a space following the semicolon delimiter, e.g.:

"AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT (Apr 22, 2015)"

Ad ID,Final URL,Impressions

123456789,http://www.example.com/1?a;b; http://www.example.com/2?c;d,0

Cheers,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[Dorian Kind]

Hi Josh,

many thanks for your quick and concise reply!

Best regards,

Dorian

[Dorian Kind]

Hi Josh,

a quick follow-up about URL lists from Upgraded URLs.

In the Placeholder Feed Item Report, we can get a FeedItem's attribute values in the "AttributeValues" field, which contains a semicolon-delimited list of the FeedItem's attributes.

Now, for a FeedItem representing a sitelink extension, the 5th attribute would contain the final URLs for this sitelink. Apparently they are either of data type URL_LIST (according to <https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/placeholders#sitelinks>) or REPEATED_URL (according to <https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/guides/upgraded-urls>).

I assume that here again, the individual URLs are separated by semicolons, but as they're inside the AttributeValues list, which itself is separated by semicolons, it seems that it's a bit difficult to parse those reports properly (especially as the next attribute in the AttributeValues field is final mobile URLs, which again is of type URL_LIST).

Am I missing the point completely or are there any pointers you can provide with regards to parsing PLACEHOLDER_FEED_ITEM_REPORT?

Thanks a lot and best regards,

Dorian

On Wednesday, April 22, 2015 at 10:28:31 PM UTC+2, Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team) wrote:

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dorian,

The correct field type for finalURLs is URL_LIST. I'll fix the documentation accordingly -- thanks for pointing out this inconsistency.

Regarding parsing the AttributeValues field, do you actually have cases where you are specifying multiple finalURLs for feed items? I ask because the primary use case for that is when your trackingUrlTemplate redirects a portion of the traffic to one final URL, and the rest to another, which usually only happens when you're running some sort of landing page experiment. In the (hopefully) rare cases where you do have multiple final URLs, report output may be a bit difficult to parse due to the issue you mentioned.

As an alternative, you could simply retrieve FeedId and FeedItemId from the report, then use either the FeedItemService or one of the extension setting services to get the final URLs.

Cheers,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[Dorian Kind]

Hi Josh,

thanks again for your quick reply. To be honest I don't really know whether there will be a lot of these use cases at our company. We're just in the process of preparing our tools to handle Upgraded URLs so we will be ready for the migration in July, and we found the whole topic of multiple final URLs to be somewhat confusing.

Just to make sure I understand correctly, if I get the following line in a PLACEHOLDER_FEED_ITEM_REPORT:

Campaign,Attribute Values

Campaign Name,This is the link text; ; This is Line 2; This is Line 3; http://example.com/url1; http://example.com/url2; http://example.com/url3; http://tracker.com/tracking-template?param={_custom_var}

then there's basically no way to tell whether http://example.com/url2 is the second FINAL URL or the first FINAL MOBILE URL?

Thanks and best regards,

Dorian

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Dorian,

Unfortunately, that's correct. You won't be able to differentiate between a semicolon that's indicating a new attribute and a semicolon that's indicating another finalUrl or finalMobileUrl for the current attribute. I'll raise this with the reporting team to see if we can improve on this, but in the meantime if you have customers with multiple final URLs or multiple final mobile URLs you may have to use the FeedItemService-based approach I mentioned.

Thanks,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[Dorian Kind]

Hi,

another update (that's the last one, promised :).

We did some tests and found that semicolons inside URLs are actually escaped. That's the good news. The bad news is that empty attributes are not returned in the Attribute Values field. Here's an example of actual downloaded data:

"Placeholder Feed Item Report (Apr 30, 2015)"

Attribute Values

Upgraded URL w/o Template; Line 1; Line 2; http://example.com/foo?bar=baz\;spam=bacon

Upgrad. URL w/ Mobile URL; http://www.example.com/#bar\;baz; http://mobile.example.com/#bar\;baz

Upgraded URL w/ Template; http://www.example.com/baz\;bar; https://tracker.com/track_me?url={lpurl}

Upg URL w/ Mobi & Templ; http://foo.example.com/baz/bar?lol\;; http://m.example.com/baz/bar?spam\;; http://tracker.com/trackedi-track?custom={_eggs}

You'll see that URLs sometimes contain "\;", which is an escaped semicolon. However, note how in the first line, the placeholder fields "LINE 2" and "LINE 3" are included, whereas they are just missing—not listed as being empy—in the next three lines. It's the same with FINAL MOBILE URLS, which is present in the second and fourth line, but completely missing in the first and third line.

Basically this means that PLACEHOLDER_FEED_ITEM_REPORTS are next to impossible to parse because it's incredibly hard to tell which part of Attribute Values belongs to which placeholder field.

TL;DR: Don't use PLACEHOLDER_FEED_ITEM_REPORTS for structural information, use FeedItemService.

Cheers,

Dorian