Serving Status of a Campaign

[ADM]

I am confused about the true meaning of the serving status field in a
campaign. I thought it was supposed to reflect whether or not a
campaign is currently serving ads, but when I check the serving status
of a campaign that is set to serve ads only during certain hours of
the day I find that the serving status is always set to SERVING
regardless of the time of day.

I have a maxCPC bid adjustment program that needs to know whether or
not a campaign is currently serving ads so that it will not adjust the
maxCPC bid when a campaign is not serving any ads. Is there some other
field in the API that indicates the true serving status of a campaign,
or is this servingStatus field the correct field to be using?

[ADM]

Try using the Campaign Target Service. There is an ad schedule target
type that contains the ad serving schedule for a campaign.

[ADM]

What time zone are the times for an ad schedule? Are they in the zone
for the campaign, or is the time in UTC?

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi,

Although it's not documented clearly, the servingStatus field
indicates if the campaign is eligible to serve based on start date,
end date, etc. Depending on other factors, such as the ad schedule
and remaining budget, the campaign may have the serving status SERVING
but not actually be serving ads at that particular moment. I'll work
with the documentation team to clarify this point.

Best,
- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team

[ADM]

So what is the best way to check to see if a campaign is currently
serving ads?

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi,

That level of information is not available in the AdWords API or web
interface. You can use the AdScheduleTargets, cost vs. budget, etc to
get a better idea of how the campaign is currently performing.

Best,
- Eric