Display Ads and Performance Max Ads - Seperate Performance (impressions and clicks) KPIs by Ad Destination and Ad Type

[Chad Wood]

Hello,

My Marketers recently informed me that our Display Ads and Performance Max Ads will change the ad-destination based on the users operating system.

1) I've been advised that the same ad can send Android users to PlayStore, IOS users to AppStore, and Desktop users to our website.

2) I've been advised that, specifically, Display and Performance Max have this ability.

Now, I can't find any documentation on this dynamic behavior. Just short of going crazy over this, I've decided to ask for help. I need to get something like the following response from the Google Ads API:

{

campaign.name: campaign_1

campaign.type: display

campaign.destination: playstore.com/app_id

campaign.impressions: 50

campaign.clicks: 15

},

{

campaign.name: campaign_1

campaign.type: display

campaign.destination: our-website.com

campaign.impressions: 75

campaign.clicks: 40

},

{

campaign.name: campaign_1

campaign.type: display

campaign.destination: appstore.com/app_id

campaign.impressions: 1

campaign.clicks: 0

},

Id doesn't need to report the `destination` per se, though... It can be the OS, or anything to help me figure this out. The goal is just to have an idea for how each campaign performs with each user-platform (Android, IOS, and Desktop).

What query could I use to obtain this result? At the moment, I can not figure out how to break-up metrics by this dynamic feature of the link.

Thanks!

[Chad Wood]

I can not find anything documenting this behavior.
So, is it really possible that the same (Display or PM) ad can actually send click-ers to different locations based solely on their detected OS?
campaign_1:
....Android Clicks -> Play Store
....IOS Clicks -> App Store
....Desktop Clicks -> Our Website

If so,  how can I break up my campaigns by this dynamic quality via API?
campaign_1 -> [
....(campaign_1, destination=playstore.com/app_id),
....(campaign_1,  destination=our-website.com), 
....(campaign_1,  destination=appstore.com/app_id)
]

and then get performance (impressions, clicks) for each new category?

(campaign_1,  playstore.com/app_id): 50 impressions, 15 clicks
(campaign_1,   our-website.com): 75 impressions, 40 clicks
(campaign_1,   appstore.com/app_id): 1 impressions, 0 clicks

I also considered that maybe this is all some misunderstanding...My Marketing team is convinced that is not the case.

So I guess the question remains, how do I query for this data? I can already use the API just fine.

[Chad Wood]

Just to better communicate our use case,

My team likes to review the entire pipeline from ad-impression all the way to purchase. They do this for every pathway a user can be acquired from.
campaign_1: impression -> click -> landing-page visit -> landing-page click-through -> signup-page visit -> signup -> free-trial completion -> purchase
campaign_2: impression -> click -> landing-page visit -> landing-page click-through -> signup-page visit -> signup -> free-trial completion -> purchase
campaign_3: impression -> click -> appstore listing visit -> app download -> app first-open -> signup -> free-trial completion -> purchase
campaign_4: impression -> click -> playstore listing visit -> app download -> app first-open -> signup -> free-trial completion -> purchase

Then, they calculate the conversion rate for each stage of the pipeline. This tells us a lot about how users on various platforms react to our content at different stages of the user-acquisition pipeline. Thereafter, Marketing uses this information to optimize their efforts.

This type of analysis has been easy to maintain in the past, as we include the targeted OS in our campaign naming convention. So I could very easily organize performance by these criteria.
Now that I know some campaigns can switch destination based on the platform it's served to, my prior method is no longer reliable.

This is why we need to break up the data in this way.

[Chad Wood]

You can disregard the last email. The marketing team is doing this:
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7101715?hl=en#:~:text=To%20target%20specific%20device%20operating,Example%3A%20Android%20or%20iOS
Quote From Link:
" " "
To target specific device operating systems, models or carriers, click "Advanced mobile and tablet options".

• Operating systems: Choose to show your ads to people on all operating systems or target specific ones. Example: Android or iOS.
  

" " "

So that's what's going on. I'm still at a loss for how to query this data  though.

On Thursday, April 6, 2023 at 2:15:23 PM UTC-7 Chad Wood wrote:

Okay, this is speculative but I think I know what is happening.

First, please use this contextual image for reference:

That's me setting up a Performance Max campaign.  This `Final URL Expansion` thing says it will utilize all final URLs from your asset group and pick  the most relevant URL for each ad-click that occurs.

So, what I imagine is going on here, is that my Marketers have mixed assets going to our website and assets going to the appstores...all inside a single Performance Max campaign.
I think they are believing that Google Ads will apply the `Final URL Expansion` effect by forwarding Android ad-clickers to the Play Store, IOS ad-clickers to the App Store, and Desktop ad-clickers to our website.
We do have some Display ads that target Android and go to  the PlayStore. Same can be said for IOS and AppStore.

I checked one of the Performance Max campaigns, and found this:


This seems to indicate that it is possible for IOS appstore final URLs from other Display Ads to leak into the Performance Max assets.
Does Google Ads actually make sure that IOS users are the ones getting sent to the app store? Because my impression is that `Final URL Expansion` optimizes for Landing Pages (on the same domain).

I guess I'm back at the original question, how can I query for Performance Max performance metrics broken up by Campaign and Ad-Click-Destination?

[Chad Wood]

Is it possible to query for Performance Max metrics (impr.& clicks) broken up by the link used in the ad?
Seeing as Performance Max campaigns consolidate assets from other campaigns, there are multiple links that may be used... multiple destinations that any click could go to,
I want to break up performance based on destination.

What dimension would I use for this?
Thanks

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to Google Ads API Forum.

With regards to your concern on querying for Performance Max performance metrics broken up by Campaign and Ad-Click-Destination, can you try referring to this documentation for your use case? The sample query here contains the final URL field for campaign, asset_group, and asset_group_asset. And these reports has campaign as its attributed resources. Please let us know how this goes on your end.

Reference links included in this email:

• documentation: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/performance-max/reporting
• campaign: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/fields/v13/campaign
• asset_group: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/fields/v13/asset_group
• asset_group_asset: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/fields/v13/asset_group_asset

Regards,

Google Ads API Team

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