v201008 reporting columns

[dkasak]

Greetings. I'm porting our software from the v13 ReportService to v201008 ReportDefinitionService, and I've hit some problems that will cause us a lot of pain. The v13 creative report ( http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/docs/developer/adwords_api_report_creative.html ) used to give us a lot of IDs and descriptive fields which we have come to rely upon. For example, the columns CampaignID, Campaign, AdGroupId, AdGroup, Keyword, KeywordTypeDisplay all made this report extremely useful, as they provided us all the information we needed on the campaign hierarchy, including descriptive fields, and the keyword text. When talking to other search engines, we would hold up this particular report as an example of an ideal report that they should try to mimic.

The new AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT doesn't contain either the CampaignID or Campaign, meaning we would have to derive that from the AdGroupID. It doesn't contain the AdGroup ( descriptive field ). It doesn't contain the Keyword ( text ) or KerywordTypeDisplay. Our reporting code runs each night, and is de-coupled from the code that maintains the campaign hierarchy and descriptive fields. So removing these columns from the report means that we have to implement a lot of other API calls in our reporting software to fetch campaigns, adgroups, and keywords, as we encounter them in a report. This is far from ideal. I understand that restricting the columns available in reports helps reports to run faster, but this benefit is lost if we have to then fetch each item as we encounter it, to get descriptive fields.

What's the chance of getting these ( and other ) useful columns back in the AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT? Thanks :)

Dan

[dkasak]

Further to this question, I have seen inconsistencies between the fields that are advertised via the getReportFields call and what is actually available in the report. I made the getReportFields API call this morning for the AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT, and it did NOT return CampaignId in the list of available fields. However I then successfully submitted an AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT request which included CampaignId, and downloaded the report, which contained the CampaignId.

So ... I am pleased that at this point we can request the CampaignId in this report, however why isn't it in the getReportFields response, and can we expect this field to continue to be available?

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi,

Could you post a request id for the SOAP call that didn't return you
the campaign id? In general, the fields returned by getReportFields
and fields accepted by a reportDefinition are supposed to have 1:1
mapping, so I'd like to run it by our reporting team for more details.

As for the missing fields, if you can post the list of fields you
would like to see in AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT, I can ask the reporting
team to make these fields available.

Cheers,
Anash P. Oommen,
AdWords API Advisor.

[dkasak]

Hi Anash. Thanks for the response :)

The request ID that returned columns NOT including CampaignId:
<requestId>ec40fba22bcd3c2105e95efcd2189909</requestId>

As for what reporting columns we need that aren't now available in this report ... ideally ALL columns that used to be available under v13 would be supported. But the ones we rely on ( which are mostly keyword-related columns ) currently are:

- keyword text
- match type
- quality score
- campaign budget
- max bid
- impression share

Some other columns which we've observed in the UI which I don't see in API reports:
- % served ( creative )
- lost impression share - rank
- lost impression share - budget
- estimated 1st page bid

---

I realise that we can get most of what we need by calling the keyword performance report, and merging the data into the ad performance report, however this seems to be a step backwards ... in fact we only just recently moved from calling individual keyword and ad performance reports to calling the combined one ( ad performance with keyword columns ). If you could let us know quickly whether we can expect these columns to appear in the ad performance report ( particularly the 1st set ), that would help us greatly to know if / how we're going to code around the issue. This is becoming quite urgent for us now, as we are targeting an early Q1 release. Thanks :)

Dan

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi Dan,

The missing CampaignId and CampaignName fields in the
AD_PERFORMANCE_REPORT is a know issue and should be resolved within
the next week. As you noticed, you can still use these fields even
though they are missing from the results of getReportFields().

As to your requested fields, some of these are missing by design. The
goal of the new reporting system is to eliminate duplicate
information, which helps make report generation faster and the
resulting downloads smaller. For this reason fields like campaign
budget are only returned in the CAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT. Once
you've downloaded the separate reports you can cross reference the
data when you need to get the full picture.

Fields like % served and impression share are not available in the
reports today, but we are working to expose this information for a
future release.

Best,
- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team

[dkasak]

We have found some more discrepancies between the columns returned by getReportFields and those actually available.

<requestId>f6d766aff713a9475564cd7b921680fb</requestId>

 ... did NOT return HourOfDay, however we find that we can successfully request an ADGROUP_PERFORMANCE_REPORT with this column included.

As before, this makes us nervous for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we would prefer not to build reports based on undocumented columns, out of fear that they might be more likely to be removed than documented ones. Secondly, it raises questions about what other columns we could use that we haven't tripped over accidentally. Finally, with our own development cutoff date quickly approaching, we are wondering if v13 reporting might not be a more stable option, and if you intend on keeping it around for longer than previously hinted at?

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi Dan,

We are aware of certain cases where although the field is not returned
in getReportFields() it is in fact supported by the report.
HourOfWeek has already been identified, and we are working with the
core engineering team to get these in sync. We apologize for the
difficulty you've had with the v2010 reporting system thus far, but I
would still encourage to use it over the v13 version.

Best,
- Eric

[Alex VM]

Hi Eric,

I have a similar issue where the HourOfDay field is missing from the getReportFields() API for the ADGROUP_PERFORMANCE_REPORT. Similarly, I could not find the said field in the following documentation:  http://code.google.com/intl/it-IT/apis/adwords/docs/appendix/reports.html#ad-group

Will the HourOfDay on AdGroup Performance Report be officially supported? If so, when will the document above or getReportFields() reflect this? Our development team is a bit anxious as we rely heavily upon this field for an  AdGroup level time of day report we have been providing our customers for several years now. We hope it will be officially documented as supported very soon as we are currently migrating to v201008.  Otherwise, not having this field will leave as no feasible alternate. Use of Account Performance Report is not a preferred solution for us.

Thanks,
Alex
 

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi Alex,

I am working with the core engineering team regarding the HourOfDay
field and other fields. In some cases the fields can be made
available easily, and in others more complex changes are required to
the backend. I don't have any estimates as to when you can expect to
see this field in the ADGROUP_PERFORMANCE_REPORT, but I'll communicate
it's urgency to the correct parties.

Best,
- Eric

On Nov 14, 10:46 pm, Alex VM <alexmarun...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> I have a similar issue where the HourOfDay field is missing from the
> getReportFields() API for the ADGROUP_PERFORMANCE_REPORT. Similarly, I

> could not find the said field in the following documentation:http://code.google.com/intl/it-IT/apis/adwords/docs/appendix/reports....

[AdWords API Advisor]

Hi Alex,

The HourOfDay field is now supported in the
ADGROUP_PERFORMANCE_REPORT, although it is not yet reflected in the
documentation. If you make a request to
ReportDefinitionService.getReportFields() you should see the field
listed as available.

Best,
- Eric

On Nov 15, 9:49 pm, AdWords API Advisor <adwordsapiadvi...@google.com>
wrote: