How to add dummy data to my test account

[Jonathan Sosa]

Hi

I'm trying to get the Campaign Performance Report for my test account, but it returns no rows.

I think the reason is adding the required segment field ClickType. (All my test campaigns have no clicks)

Is there a way to add dummy data Clicks/Impressions/etc to my test campaigns?

Best

Jonathan

[Paul Matthews (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Jonathan,

There is currently no way to add test data to your test account. We are aware of this feature request and we're looking into it.

Regards,

- Paul, AdWords API Team.

[William Rufino]

How do we test the api if we can't have data in it?

Does anyone can help with that?

[William Rufino]

Can anyone give me an idea how to test report api without data?

[Kevin Winter (AdWords API Team)]

We're working on a mini-guide explaining how to approach this.  In the meantime, here's a draft:

Test accounts will not serve impressions, therefore they will not have any metrics.  It is still possible to download structural reports - but you will only see zero-impression rows, which means that segments will not work.  To get around this limitation, we suggest displaying fake data.  The Token Review team needs to see that your application can interact with and display report data.  By mocking out the report call (i.e. pretending the report call succeeded and using a locally stored file containing fake report data), you can work with report data without actually having such data come back from the API.

The reports come back in a predictable format.  Let's say you wanted to run a Campaign Performance Report pulling Date, Campaign Name, Id, Impressions, Clicks, Cost. An example file could look like this:

"CAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT (Mar 20, 2013-Mar 23, 2013)"

Day,Campaign,Campaign ID,Impressions,Clicks,Cost

20130320,Widgets,123,1211,19,14.92

20130320,Sprockets,456,300,4,2.92

20130321,Widgets,123,901,12,9.86

20130321,Sprockets,456,340,5,3.86

20130322,Widgets,123,1065,16,11.23

20130322,Sprockets,456,509,6,5.23

20130323,Widgets,123,1005,15,10.12

20130323,Sprockets,456,287,3,1.12

By constructing such a file and storing it locally, you could have your application mock the call to the API - when the report is requested, return the stored file and process that rather than making an actual API call.  You can create one file like this for each report you’d like to display.

- Kevin Winter

AdWords API Team

[off...@expokrym.com]

Hello! Already there is a way to test properly receive and process statistics? The Token Review team needs to see that my application app before activate API. How can I do this with small fake data you wrote?

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi,

You could share screenshots with them instead, or mock the data by downloading data from UI in xml format and using that as the data source for your application.

Cheers,
Anash P. Oommen,
AdWords API Advisor.

[Mathis Lübbers]

Hey Kevin,

you said, you have worked on a mini guide which explains how to add dummy data to a test account. Where can I find that guide? 

Thank You!

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Mathis,

The way you add dummy data into a test account is just like the way you make calls to a normal AdWords account. The only differences are

- You'd use the customer id of your test account instead of your production account in the clientCustomerId header.

- Test accounts don't serve ads, so you cannot use it to test reports.

To test reports, you could download the desired type of report from UI and use that as a data source. There would be some minor differences between that report and the ones you download from the API in terms of the supported columns (e.g. reports from UI don't have ID columns), but other than that, they are in the same format and will contain the same data.

Cheers,
Anash P. Oommen,
AdWords API Advisor.

[Ron]

Hi Anash,

How would I go about this for testing the uploading of Offline Conversions, since I would need gclid's that are normally generated when running a campaign?

Thanks,
Ron

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Ron,

You need to setup a test campaign with a low budget(say, $1/day) on a production AdWords account, and use the gclid you get from that campaign to test your uploaded conversions. Since gclid is generated by clicks, and test accounts don't serve ads, there's no way to test this feature using test accounts.

Cheers,
Anash P. Oommen,
AdWords API Advisor.

[Chris Mason]

This is absolutely ridiculous, ive just gone through the biggest headache trying to get a test account in adwords so i can test an api that collects spend data and now the api wont return the required data i need to test as test accounts dont have test data, pretty much defeats the point of a test account, for once facebook test accounts are better than google test accounts at least they provide test data!

Can anyone here provide a solution to being able to actually get fake ad spend data into a test account?

On Monday, 25 March 2013 03:15:41 UTC, Jonathan Sosa wrote:

[mymanage...@gmail.com]

Any Update on this ?

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi,

No, this feature request is not yet supported in AdWords API.

Anash P. Oommen,
AdWords API Advisor.

[Venkat]

Any updates on this?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello Venkat,

It is not possible to add metrics such as Clicks and Impressions to the test accounts. Since the test accounts won't serve any Ads these metrics won't be available.

Regards,
Sai Teja, Google Ads API Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5001UAqwy4:ref

[Venkat]

How do we test the reporting api? I found something like keeping the dummy response file at https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/guides/zeroimpression-structure-reports#structure_reports.

I didn't find the brief explanation of how to implement it through client library. 

Can we apply for production developer token without doing this implementation?

On Monday, March 25, 2013 at 8:45:41 AM UTC+5:30, Jonathan Sosa wrote:

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello Venkat,

It is not possible to upload dummy data or reports to your production/test accounts. As mentioned in that guide, If you include zero impressions to true in your report call the result will contain all the records even if the entity has zero impressions. If not you will see only data that is having impressions. For test account using zero impressions you should be able to get records for most of the reports even if they didn't have any metrics.

In order to implement the zero impressions you have enable that field to true in your report program as shown here for Java client library code. Code samples in other languages can be found here. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Related to the production developer token, you could apply for it from here and the fields in the form are self explanatory. Once you apply for the form API compliance team will get back to you within 2 business days. In the guide mentioned above, no minimum functionality mentioned for basic access level. If there are any API_compliance team will get back to you. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[Nicolas Claus]

So what is the point of test accounts if we can't even fetch some dummy data? Could you guys hardcode it in some way? For example all test accounts may have some default set of campaigns with hardcoded metrics etc. This is so obvious solution. The issue exists for years. I can't believe you still didn't fix it.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Nicolas,

Thanks for reaching out and for sharing this feedback. It is possible to fetch dummy data from a test account, it's just that for reports there will not be any performance statistics because ads from tests accounts aren't trafficked. As mentioned above in this thread there are ways to work around the absence of performance statistics, including by setting the flag: includeZeroImpressions. That will allow you to develop against the structure of a report.

To my knowledge I do not believe hardcoding mock performance data into test accounts is functionality that is planned, but if you think it would improve the experience compared to using reports with null values please submit a feature request on this page: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/google-ads-api-feedback/

Thank you again for your feedback and consideration.

Best,
Ben Karl, Google Ads API Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5001U8Lu0Q:ref

[YuK1]

I don't know how to prepare my own dummy data.

I want to make sure that the number displayed on the screen and the number obtained through the API are the same.

What should I do?

2019年7月18日木曜日 2:28:27 UTC+9 adsapiforumadvisor:

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hello,

When you say you want to see the same data in the API that you see on your screen, may I ask for further details? Are you saying that you see something in the Google Ads UI, and you want to be able to see that in the API? Do you have an example of what you see on your screen that you want to be able to retrieve in the API?

Thanks,
Nadine Wang, Google Ads API Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5001U8Lu0Q:ref