Google Ads API - Reports Metrics variation for past days on subsequent Report Runs

[Andrea Lari]

In our organisation we get daily Stats reports for the previous day containing, among other metrics, Impressions, Clicks and Cost.

The reports are segmented by Ad Group

We get these reports during the night.

We use the version 7 of the Google Ads APIs.

Running the same reports in the morning, we noticed that the values for these metrics changes (we get either higher or lower values, depending on the account / campaign / ad group).

The change ranges from negligible in high traffic accounts (less than 0.1%) to quite high in low traffic accounts (up to 10%).

We notice the same behavior even if we get the report for two days before.

What we would like to know, as we didn't find any mention of this behavior in the documentation, is how long does it take for these metrics to become stable:

two days ? a week ? a month ?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for reaching out. Can you please confirm if these fluctuations are also occurring in the UI as well? If so, this is not an Ads specific issue, and it would be best handled by the Ads product team. As for general guidelines on when certain data are settled, please see this general support article.

Regards,
Matt
Google Ads API Team

Matt Google Ads API Team

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[Andrea Lari]

Hi Matt.

Apologies for the late reply.
For some reason i didn't get an email about your reply even though i am subscribed to the thread.

I can confirm that we have not seen these fluctuations in the Google Ads UI.

I can also tell you that on some accounts, we see changes for Impressions in the previous day report, just by running every minute or so.

To make it clear, i run the report on Campaign getting Impressions for the previous day, and i run it again in a few minutes, and the value is different (greater).

This happens well after the 3 AM time (account's timezone).

Regards,

Andrea

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Andrea,

Thank you for your follow up. I work with Matt and allow me to assist you.

The API's reports should return only what has been processed or calculated by Google Ads and values should be similar to values from their equivalent UI view. Both UI and API reports should also follow the timeline outlined in the article earlier provided by Matt, in regards to your statistics' availability.

That said, could you confirm if there are differences between values from the UI and the API's reports? If there are, could you provide the complete GAQL you used, the complete request and response logs, with the request-id, and also the Google Ads UI screenshot?

If you haven't yet, logging can be enabled by navigating to the Client libraries > Your client library (ex. Java) > Logging documentation, which you can access from this link. You may then send the requested information via the Reply privately to author option. If this option is not available, you may send the details directly to our googleadsa...@google.com alias instead.

Otherwise, the changes in the values you are experiencing could be due to internal processes, which may included adjustments (discussed in the data freshness article), that can be further explained by the Google Ads Product Support team.

Best regards,

Peter Laurence Napa Oliquino Google Ads API Team

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[Andrea Lari]

Hi Peter.

Thanks you for you answer.

I would like to reiterate that our problem is not that we view different values in the API's Reports and the UI.

Our issue is that during the morning (so 10 hours after the midnight of the Account's Timezone and therefore well after the time mentioned in the article you sent me), we can run the API's Report every couple of minutes, and we get consistently increasing values for Impressions (and sometimes Clicks / Costs).

We store the result of the API's reports in BigQuery, and we always relied on the assumption that those values should be stable for the day before.

It is clear that they are not.

Right now to avoid issues, we query for the day before and the day before yesterday, and we replace the data in BQ, therefore correcting the day before yesterday's data.

Kind regards,

Andrea

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Andrea,

I work with Peter and let me provide support to your concern.

Please note the metrics are subject for adjustment so you will see different values if you are generating report on different times. If you want to know more information about this, I would also suggest to reach out to the Google Ads Product Support team since as they are more equipped to explain how metrics / statistics are accumulated in an account.

Furthermore, to keep your database updated, I would suggest also to keep using the current workaround that you implemented.

"Right now to avoid issues, we query for the day before and the day before yesterday, and we replace the data in BQ, therefore correcting the day before yesterday's data."

Regards,

Ernie John Blanca Tacata Google Ads API Team

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