Why is the "creative quality score" (aka ad relevance) associated with an ad group criterion?

[Nelson Brochado]

Hello.

My question is in the title, but let me elaborate on why I am asking it.

If an ad group criterion is some kind of filter that we apply to an ad group (so I suppose that each ad in that ad group also "inherits" this criterion/filter) and if the "ad relevance" is a property of an ad, then I don't understand why we would have the property ad_group_criterion.quality_info.creative_quality_score under the ad group criterion rather than the ad. We cannot find this property in ad_group_ad, but it's a property of an ad, even the documentation states "Output only. The performance of the ad compared to other advertisers."

Note: I'm not asking how to get the ad relevance for an ad. I already asked that in another post. I'm asking why we find the ad relevance for an ad inside the ad group criterion in the API. This is somehow a follow-up question to my previous question.

Thanks for all the help.

Kind regards

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Nelson,

Thanks for reaching out. The quality score metric is measured at the keyword level, not the ad level. Keywords are ad group criteria, and so this score is available for the ad group criterion resource. It is also available in the keyword_view as a metric. 

Regards,

Matt Google Ads API Team

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[Nelson Brochado]

Hi Matt.

Thanks for your answer.

But can you clarify why the quality score is measured at the keyword level? Is it because this quality score depends on the keyword that triggered the ad to be served? Why is it called "ad relevance"? It seems to me that this property/metric may even be shared across all ads in the same ad_group, hence it's available in the ad_group_criterion. Is this correct? Do all ads in the same ad_group (associated with the same ad_group_criterion) share the same "ad relevance" value? If it's shared across all ads in the same ad group, wouldn't it make more sense to call this "ad group relevance" or "keyword relevance"?

Kind regards

Nelson

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Nelson,

Thank you for your reply.

Since the subject is more Product related, the team that is more equipped to provide the answers you need regarding quality scores and its association to entities such as keywords, and other metrics, would be the Google Ads Product Support team. You can then reach their team via this support link.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Peter Laurence Google Ads API Team

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[Nelson Brochado]

Hi Peter,

I've reached out to the Google Ads Team. I was told that the "ad relevance" may be different for each ad in the same ad group, so my assumption that all ads in the same ad group have the same "ad relevance" is wrong. If that's correct, then what exactly does ad_group_criterion.quality_info.creative_quality_score represent? The Google Ads documentation indeed says that the quality score is computed at the keyword level, so one would expect it to be found in the keyword_view or ad_group_criterion, but then I don't understand why 

1. I was told by a Google Ads team member that the "ad relevance" can be different for each ad in the same ad group and 

2. why the Google Ads API does not provide a way to get this "ad relevance" for each ad

3. What does ad_group_criterion.quality_info.creative_quality_score? Is it an average of all "ad relevances" associated with some keyword? I know that the ad relevance is computed as a function of the ad and the exact keywords that match the ad, so it's possible this is some kind of average. Can you clarify this?

Kind regards

Nelson

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Nelson,

Thank you for your reply.

You may refer below for my responses to the items you sent over :

1. I was told by a Google Ads team member that the "ad relevance" can be different for each ad in the same ad group and 
2. why the Google Ads API does not provide a way to get this "ad relevance" for each ad

For 1 and 2, our API support team unfortunately does not have visibility on how Google Ads computes or associates ad relevance to each ad. This topic is best discussed by the Product experts from the Product support team. I did, however, find this Product article about quality score and a brief discussion on how ad relevance factors in to the said score.

As to why the Google Ads API does not associate this for each ad, or rather at the ad level, in its reports (ex. ad_group_ad), the API only mirrors what is available in the Google Ads UI. If a UI report or view provides this information, you can send to our team the complete screenshot of the UI view so our team can then use it as reference to create a feature request, subject for review, for this to be supported in the API's reports.

3. What does ad_group_criterion.quality_info.creative_quality_score? Is it an average of all "ad relevances" associated with some keyword? I know that the ad relevance is computed as a function of the ad and the exact keywords that match the ad, so it's possible this is some kind of average. Can you clarify this?

As for this item, the information our team has on this field (and how this is calculated) is limited to the details provided in the API documentation. Allow me to raise this item to the rest of our team for further insights.

[Nelson Brochado]

Alright, thanks for all the help.

If "the API only mirrors what is available in the Google Ads UI", then what kind of UI reports could we reproduce with ad_group_criterion.quality_info.creative_quality_score and why did you add this property to ad_group_criterion? That's something that it's still unclear after many questions. We can create UI reports with the ad group and ad relevance column in the UI. We can also add the column "ad". In my specific case, the report slightly increased in terms of rows. If the GADs mirrors what the UI can do, then it must be possible to recreate e.g. a report with columns "ad group", "ad relevance" and "ad" with the API, even if we need to get the data from different resources, which we would definitely need now, because "ad" and "ad relevance" cannot be retrieved from the same resource: this is not a problem - as long as we can recreate the UI report, even if we have to merge data from different sources, that's fine to me - I just would like to understand how to merge that data and how the API maps to the UI.

Thanks.