Empty criterion report in display campaign

[Christian]

Hi,

I already checked the various forum posts about empty criterion reports but it looks like I have a new problem in context of a specific campaign.

The problematic campaign has impressions and clicks, so my understanding is that metrics should be attributed to at least one criteria. The criterion performance report (v201409), however, is empty. We use the following selector (Python dict notation):

'selector': {

    'fields': [

        'Date',

        'AdGroupId', 'Id',

        'Cost', 'Impressions', 'AveragePosition', 'Clicks',

        'Conversions', 'ConversionsManyPerClick', 'ConversionValue',

    ],

    'predicates': [

        {

            'field': 'AdGroupStatus',

            'operator': 'IN',

            'values': ['ENABLED'],

        },

        {

            'field': 'Status',

            'operator': 'IN',

            'values': ['ENABLED', 'PAUSED'],

        },

    ],

}

For other accounts this works as expected. Even in the same account on a similar campaign, the report is not empty and corresponds to metrics in the AdWords UI.

Some information on the campaign with an empty report: no display keywords, only automatic placements, targeting by remarketing list and age range.

I can provide the campaign IDs in a private message.

Thanks in avance for your support.

Best regards,

Christian

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Christian,

Is the campaign using custom affinity audiences, by any chance? If so, the criteria API report won't return rows for impressions attributed to those audiences since they aren't yet supported in the API.

Thanks,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[Christian]

Hi Josh,

thanks for the quick reply.

Right now the ad group in question uses only a remarketing list. Until yesterday also an in-market audience was active (now paused). An affinity audience has been used a few weeks ago, but is in status removed since then.

I'd be very thankful if you could check the campaign. I'll post the ID in private.

Best,

Christian

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Christian,

I suspect this is due to the fact that those impressions were attribute to Parental Status criteria, and that criteria type is not yet supported in the API. We're aware that this is causing some confusion and are discussing ways to improve how we handle unsupported criteria types in reports.

In general, I would avoid using the Criteria Performance Report for Display campaigns because that report is a single attribution report, meaning it chooses just one criterion to attribute to each impression. This is fine for Search campaigns because this will almost always be the Keyword that triggered the ad.

For Display, however, you often have multiple criteria that contribute to an impression, so using a single attribution report gives an incomplete picture. It's better to use the criteria type-specific multiple attribution reports such as AGE_RANGE_PERFORMANCE_REPORT, GENDER_PERFORMANCE_REPORT,  PLACEMENT_PERFORMANCE_REPORT, etc. Those reports will give you views of your impressions that are similar to the sub-tab views on the Display Network tab in the UI.

Thanks,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[Christian]

Hi Josh,

thanks for clarification. Indeed, that seems to be the problem here.

Concerning the multiple attribution reports, we already utilize them to, e.g., optimize bid modifiers for age or gender criteria. One of our use cases for the criteria performance report is that we use its aggregated metric values to calculate ad group default CPCs. This obviously does not work if not all impressions can be found in that report. Do ad group performance reports include impressions attributed to parental status criteria or affinity audiences? That would be a work-around for us, but still it feels inconsistent if an aggregated criteria performance report does not match the values of a corresponding ad group performance report.

Thanks for your ongoing support!

Best,

Christian

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Christian,

The Ad Group Performance Report should include all impressions, including those for parental status or custom affinity audiences, so I definitely recommend using that for your use case.

We're actively looking into improving handling of unsupported criteria types in criteria level reports, as we realize this is causing some confusion for users.

Thanks,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[Christian]

Hi Josh,

as a suggestion for dealing with unsupported criteria, we would love to see corresponding metrics to be aggregated into the 3000000 or another special fixed-ID criterion. For now we'll use the ad group report to get metric values not given on criterion level, but it would be great to know that values on criterion and ad group level are consistent. Using a special "fill up" criterion would make this possible.

In the problematic ad group I referenced, all 3 parental states are enabled, so I wonder what is the reasoning in attributing impressions to one of those criteria, instead to a dimension which actually is used for targeting (e.g. age range). Is there a kind of determined behavior one can expect here?

Best regards,

Christian

[Josh Radcliff (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Christian,

Thanks for the feedback regarding how you'd like to see unsupported criteria types handled. I'll bring this up in our discussion on this topic.

Regarding the impressions attribute to parental status, I think that what happened there was that even though you may have had targeting on age range, if age range data was not available for a given impression, then AdWords will assign what it determines to be the most relevant targeting criteria to that impression.

Cheers,

Josh, AdWords API Team

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hi Christian,

I just wanted to let you know that this issue has been resolved as of AdWords API v201605.

Cheers,

Anthony

AdWords API Team

[Christian]

Hi Anthony,

thank you very much for the update and for fixing this issue!

Best,

Christian