Migrating from Local Campaigns to Performance Max Campaigns

[Laurent Thoulon]

Hello,

I hope you're doing well.

We've been trying to migrate from Local Campaigns to Performance Max campaigns and our results are currently underwhelming.

First, to be quite clear about something: we were very happy with local campaigns. Our goal is to bring people into stores so we want our campaigns to focus on that. As such we were watching the "get directions" metric. We would also be interested in the Store Visits metrics but that's somewhat of another story.

So we've adapted our code to use performance max campaigns (PMC) instead of local campaigns (LC) but we seem to be getting much less impressions on our PMC than on our LC.

We understand that we may need to add some CustomerConversionGoals (https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/goals/customer-goals) but we're not sure about the process to do this. We've been able to see that we have some that were created automatically when we created LC but it's not the case with PMC.

How should we work with PMC to have them behave like the LC did ?

Thanks

Laurent

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Laurent,

Thanks for reaching out. Please see this example that demonstrates how to set customer and campaign level conversion goals for Performance Max campaigns. To enable ads for products sold in local stores for your Performance Max campaign, you can set the enable_local field. 

For general questions related to using Performance Max campaigns instead of Local campaigns, please reach out to product support. 

Regards,

Matt Google Ads API Team

 

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[Laurent Thoulon]

Hello,

Hi,

Thank you for your answer. I've looked at the example you provide me with and there are different things that do not match our use case:

• First, we do not have a merchant center account. We are using an GoogleAds Manager Account to manage multiple GoogleAds account. Each GoogleAds account is linked to a Business Group through a Feed using PlacesLocationFeedData. We'd like to be targeting and reporting on those Stores. Is this possible without a merchant account center ?
• With our local campaigns we were optimizing on the DRIVING_DIRECTIONS and we were also interested in CLICK_TO_CALL and STORE_VISIT. It seems that these correspond respectively to the following conversion actions: GET_DIRECTION, CONTACT and STORE_VISIT. We can see these conversion actions have been created on our GoogleAds account when we created a local campaign. How can we programmatically create these for our performance max campaign ? 

Thank you
Regards

Laurent

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Laurent,

Thank you for the reply. I am also a member of the Google Ads API team and let me provide support to your concern.

For the first question, so that we can check if this is possible in the Google Ads API and to possibly raise a feature request if not supported "Each GoogleAds account is linked to a Business Group through a Feed using PlacesLocationFeedData. We'd like to be targeting and reporting on those Stores. Is this possible without a merchant account center ?", could you confirm if this is possible in the UI? The product team can help you verify if this is possible to the performance max campaign so you can reach out to them via this link. If possible, kindly ask them to provide the related document where we set it up in the UI and share it with us.

For the second question, try following this guide for creating the conversion action and set the specific types that you've mentioned to the category field.

Regards,

Ernie John Google Ads API Team

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[Laurent Thoulon]

Hello,

I have contacted the product team through the means you provided. I'll be waiting on their answer.

Meanwhile, I already tried what your guide suggests and it refuses the various types and categories. Here are the tests we did and the response we got:

Test 1
.setCategory(ConversionActionCategoryEnum.ConversionActionCategory.STORE_VISIT)
.setOrigin(ConversionOriginEnum.ConversionOrigin.STORE)
.setType(ConversionActionTypeEnum.ConversionActionType.WEBPAGE) // Although that's not really what we want

com.google.ads.googleads.v11.errors.GoogleAdsException: errors {
  error_code {
    field_error: INVALID_VALUE
  }
  message: "The field\'s value is invalid."
  trigger {
    int64_value: 26
  }
  location {
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "operations"
      index: 0
    }
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "create"
    }
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "category"
    }
  }
}

Test 2

.setCategory(ConversionActionCategoryEnum.ConversionActionCategory.STORE_VISIT)
.setOrigin(ConversionOriginEnum.ConversionOrigin.STORE)
.setType(ConversionActionTypeEnum.ConversionActionType.STORE_VISITS)

com.google.ads.googleads.v11.errors.GoogleAdsException: errors {
  error_code {
    conversion_action_error: CREATION_NOT_SUPPORTED
  }
  message: "Creation of this conversion action type isn\'t supported by Google Ads API."
  location {
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "operations"
      index: 0
    }
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "create"
    }
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "type"
    }
  }
}

Test 3

.setCategory(ConversionActionCategoryEnum.ConversionActionCategory.GET_DIRECTIONS)
.setOrigin(ConversionOriginEnum.ConversionOrigin.GOOGLE_HOSTED)
.setType(ConversionActionTypeEnum.ConversionActionType.GOOGLE_HOSTED)

com.google.ads.googleads.v11.errors.GoogleAdsException: errors {
  error_code {
    conversion_action_error: CREATION_NOT_SUPPORTED
  }
  message: "Creation of this conversion action type isn\'t supported by Google Ads API."
  location {
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "operations"
      index: 0
    }
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "create"
    }
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "type"
    }
  }
}

Test 4

.setCategory(ConversionActionCategoryEnum.ConversionActionCategory.GET_DIRECTIONS)
.setOrigin(ConversionOriginEnum.ConversionOrigin.GOOGLE_HOSTED)
.setType(ConversionActionTypeEnum.ConversionActionType.UNKNOWN)

com.google.ads.googleads.v11.errors.GoogleAdsException: errors {
  error_code {
    request_error: INVALID_ENUM_VALUE
  }
  message: "Enum value \'UNKNOWN\' cannot be used."
  location {
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "operations"
      index: 0
    }
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "create"
    }
    field_path_elements {
      field_name: "type"
    }
  }
}

I already read through:

https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/additional-types

https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/goals/campaign-goals

https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/goals/overview

And a bunch of other pages without success.

Thanks for your help

Regards

Laurent

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi Laurent,

Thank you for the reply.

For our team to further check if you are making the request appropriately and validate why you are encountering these errors, I would need your help in sending over the complete API logs(request and response with request-id) generated on your end.

You may then send the requested logs 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.

Best regards,

Heidi Google Ads API Team

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