Copy keywords, ad or entire adGroup info from different account

[Michael]

Hi API team,

Recently I am building an application based on Adwords API and we have access to manager account and two client account. We want to copy adGroup from one account to the other. For example, there is AdGroup E in Campaign a under account 123-456-7890, and we want to copy this adGroup to an AdGroup in Campaign b under account 456-789-0123. Normally we don't need to copy all adGroups, so we probably need to copy 600+ each time. But we need to copy all keywords ,ads and settings.

I tried this in two ways, but neither works. 

First I tried to copy adGroups E under 123-456-7890 and pasted under 456-789-0123 in UI, it doesnt' work. Then I tried to edit ad.properties. If I changed api.adwords.clientCustomerId to 123-456-7890, I can read the data from 123-456-7890 but I cannot add new adGroup under 456-789-0123, SOAP said ACTION_NOT_PERMITTED. If I changed clientCustomerId to 456-789-0123, I cannot query original data but I can create adGroup.

For now, I can get ALL ids and names, including Campaign ID and AdGroup ID. So just need to find out a way to copy these objects using API. If it's not possible through API, is there a way to work around? I can provide SOAP info if needed.

Thanks a lot.

Yali

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hi,

Unfortunately, there is no way to copy objects such as ad groups from one account to another using AdWords API. I recommend looking into Batch Processing. This will allow you to create objects such as campaigns and ad groups in bulk with the API.

Regards,

Anthony

AdWords API Team

[Michael]

Thanks Anthony, but even using batch processing, we want get information from old existing ads or keywords, is there possible for us? And if we have id for keywords or adGroupId, why we cannot get the object, I think those ids are globally unique.

[Michael]

And copy within same account is absolutely doable I think.

On Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 1:33:57 PM UTC-8, Anthony Madrigal wrote:

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hi Michael,

Although ad groups are globally unique, keywords are not. You can fetch info on existing ad groups and keywords using either AdGroupService or Adgroup Performance Report and AdGroupCriterionService or Keywords Performance Report respectively. There is no copy method in AdWords API, but you can fetch the respective fields and use them to create "copies" of them in separate requests.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[Michael]

Thanks Anthony, the issue I am facing is I can only use one ClientCustomerId in ads.properties file and we need information from account A and create new adGroup under account B. If I set the id to account A, I can read the data from account A but I cannot create new adGroup under account B. If I set id to account B, I can create adGroup under account B but I cannot read data from account A. I was wondering if there is a bridge we can use, or how you suggest we can work around this issue. Thanks a lot.

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hi Michael,

Unfortunately, there is no direct way to do this. You will need to get the the data you need from one account then manually use that info to create the new ad groups in the other account. I suggested the batch processing as a way to save some time when creating these ad groups.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can help with. 

[Michael]

Thanks Anthony