Placement Performance report has duplicate rows

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Oliver

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Mar 21, 2019, 3:23:29 AM3/21/19
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The documentation for the Placement Performance report (v201809) state that data is aggregated at the placement level.

When we download this placement report for customer ID 5205280896 (for the period  1st May 2018 - 30th Oct 2018) we get many duplicate rows where the placement data is not aggregated.  See attached screenshot for an example where there are 2 rows for the same campaign.

These are all automatic placements because the Criterion ID is -- as per the documentation.  We're filtering for IsNegative = false  i.e. we're not downloading excluded placements.

Any idea why the aggregation is not working as expected?

Oliver




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googleadsapi...@google.com

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Mar 21, 2019, 5:02:48 AM3/21/19
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Hi Oliver,

To better investigate this, could you provide the complete report definition you used when you generated the Placement Performance Report?

Thanks and regards,
Luis
Google Ads API Team


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Oliver

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Mar 21, 2019, 5:28:17 AM3/21/19
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Hi Luis,

I don't have access to the complete report definition unfortunately.  We use AWQL to download reports and here is the query we use in this case for customer ID 5205280896:

SELECT CampaignId, AverageCpc, Clicks, ConversionRate, Conversions, ConversionValue, Cost, CostPerConversion, Ctr, Impressions, Criteria, Id FROM PLACEMENT_PERFORMANCE_REPORT WHERE CampaignId IN [1476506364, 599824041] AND AdGroupStatus IN [ENABLED] AND IsNegative = FALSE AND AdNetworkType1 IN ['CONTENT', 'MIXED'] AND Impressions >= 1 DURING 20180501,20181030

I hope the above is enough for you to be able to investigate the issue.

Regards

Oliver

googleadsapi...@google.com

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Mar 21, 2019, 10:47:53 PM3/21/19
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Hi Oliver,

Thank you for providing your report definition. Upon further investigation, I found out that your data looks duplicate because it was implicitly segmented by its AdGroupId (see the screenshot for details). This being said, you may take note that every report in AdWords API is segmented by its unique key (like CampaignId, AdGroupId, etc.) even though they're not included in your selector fields. You may check this guide for more details about implicit segmentation.

Regards,
Luis
Google Ads API Team


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Placement Performance Report.png

Oliver

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Mar 22, 2019, 5:07:48 AM3/22/19
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Hi Luis,

If this report is always segmented by the AdGroupId, then IMHO the documentation is not accurate.  The report documentation says:

The Placements Performance report includes all statistics aggregated at the placement level, one row per placement.

This is obviously not true because the data is not aggregated at the placement level. We're not sure what aggregation is being referred to in the documentation in this case.

Regards

Oliver

googleadsapi...@google.com

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Mar 25, 2019, 5:07:16 PM3/25/19
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Hi Oliver,

Thanks for pointing out the documentation issue. Luis's response was accurate: the report is implicitly segmented by ad group ID. I'll make a note of this and update our documentation accordingly.

Best regards,
Josh, Google Ads API Team


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Christian Romming

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Jun 26, 2019, 6:12:52 AM6/26/19
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Hi,

We're seeing a similar thing for the Shopping Performance report: it's not segmented by ad group ID according to the documentation, but it appears to be implicitly segmented by it still. The same is true for Age Range Performance and Gender Performance.

Can you confirm whether all reports that contain ad group ID are implicitly segmented by it? If that's not the case, can you please provide a list of the reports that are?

Thank you,

Christian

Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod

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Jun 26, 2019, 3:50:58 PM6/26/19
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Hi Christian,

Thank you for contacting the support. As Luis mentioned earlier, every report in AdWords API is segmented by its unique key (like CampaignId, AdGroupId, etc.) even though they're not included in your selector fields. This will be true for all the reports which will have AdGroupId as attribute and reports will be implicitly segmented by it. If you have any further questions could you please share the report definition to investigate further using reply privately to the author option.

Regards,
Nikisha Patel, Google Ads API Team



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Christian Romming

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Jun 28, 2019, 11:30:03 AM6/28/19
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Nikisha,

Thanks.

every report in AdWords API is segmented by its unique key (like CampaignId, AdGroupId, etc.)

How do we know what this unique key is for each report? It's not described in the report documentation or on the implicit segmentation page that Luis linked to. Are you saying that whenever a report includes one of the "unique key" attributes such as AdGroupId or CampaignId the report will be segmented by this field? If so, what is the full set of "unique key" fields?

Thanks again,

Christian


On Wednesday, June 26, 2019 at 12:50:58 PM UTC-7, adsapiforumadvisor wrote:

Hi Christian,

Thank you for contacting the support. As Luis mentioned earlier, every report in AdWords API is segmented by its unique key (like CampaignId, AdGroupId, etc.) even though they're not included in your selector fields. This will be true for all the reports which will have AdGroupId as attribute and reports will be implicitly segmented by it. If you have any further questions can share the report definition to investigate further using reply privately to the author option.



Regards,
Nikisha Patel, Google Ads API Team



ref:_00D1U1174p._5001UCZZU3:ref

Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod

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Jun 28, 2019, 4:36:30 PM6/28/19
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Hi Christian,

All the reports support data to be split by segments. For example, the Keywords Performance report is implicitly segmented by Id and AdGroupId, even though they're not included in the selector fields, because a keyword is identified by both Id and AdGroupId. Similarly, data for Campaign Performance Report will always be aggregated at campaign level (Campaign ID) even though they're not included in your selector fields. This is true for all reports. The description under each report type should help you understand how the reports are segmented.



Regards,
Nikisha Patel, Google Ads API Team



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Christian Romming

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Jun 28, 2019, 4:50:18 PM6/28/19
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Nikisha,

Thanks, but copy-pasting from the documentation (which I linked to) and previous answers in this thread is not helpful.

The Shopping Performance report description only says the following about segmentation: 

The Shopping Performance report provides shopping campaign statistics aggregated at the product (OfferId field) level.

Says nothing about AdGroupId. So my questions again are:

1. How do we know what this unique key is for each report? It's not described in the report documentation or on the implicit segmentation page that Luis linked to. 

2. Are you saying that whenever a report includes one of the "unique key" attributes such as AdGroupId or CampaignId the report will be segmented by this field? If so, what is the full set of "unique key" fields?


Christian

Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod

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Jul 1, 2019, 3:01:18 PM7/1/19
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Hi Christian,

I apologize for the inconvenience. I understand your concern and would try my best to address them in the responses below.
1. How do we know what this unique key is for each report? It's not described in the report documentation or on the implicit segmentation page that Luis linked to: We do not have a separate documentation for the list of unique keys and their report types. The closest we have is the particular report type for the Google Ads entities. Please refer to this guide on choosing the most suitable report for your requirements. The Shopping performance report is a product level report where the data is implicitly segmented based on the products. 
2. Are you saying that whenever a report includes one of the "unique key" attributes such as AdGroupId or CampaignId the report will be segmented by this field? If so, what is the full set of "unique key" fields? -> Yes, that’s right. 
Let us know if this helps or if you need any additional information.



Regards,
Nikisha Patel, Google Ads API Team



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Christian Romming

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Jul 1, 2019, 4:02:04 PM7/1/19
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Nikisha,

Again, this doesn't really answer either of questions. I'll focus on question (2).

I asked:

Are you saying that whenever a report includes one of the "unique key" attributes such as AdGroupId or CampaignId the report will be segmented by this field? If so, what is the full set of "unique key" fields?

You said:

 Yes, that’s right. 

This only answers the first part. So to be crystal clear, and please correct me if I'm wrong:

There exists a set of "unique key" attributes such as AdGroupId and CampaignId such that whenever one of these attributes is included in a report, the report is implicitly segmented by this attribute, even if this is not spelled out in the report definition. Assuming this is correct, my question is: what is the full list of "unique key" attributes?

If you're not sure what the answer is, could you please escalate this within your team?

Thank you.

Christian

Christian Romming

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Jul 9, 2019, 7:37:23 PM7/9/19
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Hi Nikisha - any updates on this?

Thanks,

Christian

Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod

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Jul 10, 2019, 8:05:51 AM7/10/19
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Hello,

We don't have this information explicitly listed all in one place, but the documentation at the top of each specific report page should have this information for that report. For example, on top of the Keywords Performance Report age, it says, "The Keywords Performance report includes all statistics aggregated at the keyword level, one row per keyword."

If you find this documentation to be missing or inaccurate for any given report, please let me know so we can take a look at updating the documentation.

Regards,
Mike, Google Ads API Team

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Christian Romming

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Aug 9, 2019, 2:08:40 AM8/9/19
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After some back-and-forth over private messages, my understanding is this: Whenever the report states that it's broken down by a criterion that can be targeted at the Campaign or AdGroup level, Campaign or AdGroup should be included in the breakdown. 

To answer my own question from above, the complete list of "unique key" fields is Campaign and AdGroup, and they should be included in the "unique key" whenever they're checked as a "Target" for the report's criterion here.

Christian
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