Local Services - Credits/Refunds in Cost Data

[Phil Rotella]

Hi,

This has been mentioned in a few other conversations, but wanted to renew the topic and provide some additional details. The costs that the Google Ads API/UI reports for Local Services campaigns are inconsistent with those reported in the Local Services API/UI, and with how Google Ads costs get reported for other campaigns, but if they were to get aligned I think the Google Ads API would become an incredibly useful tool for managing Local Service Ads. 

With Local Services, costs accrue for charged leads; however, those charged leads can be disputed. If a dispute is approved, the cost associated with that lead is credited back to the advertiser, and the lead is no longer considered "charged" from a spend reporting perspective (i.e.,  the Local Services API and UI remove those from the Current Period Cost and Leads Charged). This is similar to how Google Ads handles invalid clicks -- when a click is deemed invalid (be it in real time, within a few hours, or weeks later), the spend is credited back and the click and its associated cost get removed from the campaign reporting. However, for campaign reporting of Local Services campaigns in Google Ads, successfully disputed leads are still counted under Conversions and the spend that was refunded is still counted under Cost.

This approach to reporting Local Services costs in Google Ads renders it unusable, at least for my workflows. On the other hand, if refunded spend was removed from the Cost reporting in Google Ads (or could be identified in some way), this would be a HUGE help for managing Local Service Ads, since the Google Ads API is far more powerful and reliable than the Local Service Ads API.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to the Google Ads API Team.

Since you mentioned that you were seeing inconsistencies with your Google Ads API/UI reporting. Can you please provide us with the complete logs (request and response with request ID) generated on their end so we can investigate further and provide precise guidance.

• request: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/concepts/field-service?hl=en#request 
• response: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/concepts/field-service?hl=en#response 
• request-id: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/concepts/call-structure?hl=en#request-id

You can provide it via Reply privately to the author option. If this option is not available, then send it instead on this email address googleadsa...@google.com 

Additionally, with regards to Local service ads support for Google Ads API, our team has already raised a feature request for this to be available in Google Ads API, however this is subject for review. All I can say is for now, please keep an eye on our blog post for the updates and releases.

• Blog - https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/search/label/google_ads_api 

This message is in relation to case "ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2msCUK:ref"

Thanks,
 

Google Ads API Team