Discrepancy Between AdMob API Data and Dashboard – Anyone Else Facing This?

[jignesh boricha]

Hey devs 👋

I'm working on a portal that integrates with the Google AdMob API to display reporting metrics like earnings, ad requests, impressions, etc.

For a comparison between the API and the AdMob dashboard (13–14 July), I noticed some unexpected differences. Here's a quick comparison:

| Metric | Portal (Dashboard) | API Response | | ------------------ | ------------------ | ------------ | | Estimated Earnings | $X.85 | $X.9112 | | Total Ad Requests | XX,691 | XX,253 | | Matched Requests | XX,163 | XX,559 | | Impressions | XX,403 | XX,726 | | Clicks | X,560 | X,593 | | Match Rate | XX.59% | XX.65% | | Show Rate | XX.62% | XX.23% | | Impression CTR | X.67% | X.36% |


Most values are fairly close, which is fine. But the Show Rate (a difference of 2.69 percentage points) and Impression CTR (a difference of 21.39 percentage points) are off by quite a bit. I'm wondering if others have faced similar discrepancies?

My thoughts so far:

Could it be timezone misalignment?

Is there data sampling on either end?

Maybe some metrics are calculated differently by the dashboard?

I would love to hear if anyone has dealt with this issue or found a workaround/explanation. 🙏

Thanks in advance!

[AdMob API Developer Forum]

Hello,

We have checked our systems and haven't found a general discrepancy between AdMob API and AdMob UI reporting data.

When users report a mismatch, it's usually due to one of the following two reasons. Please check these first:

• Currency Mismatch: The most common issue is incorrectly comparing data in different currencies (e.g., Euro vs. USD). Please ensure the currency setting is identical in both the API request and the UI report.
• Timezone Mismatch: Since metrics like Show Rate are also mismatched, the issue may be the timezone. The API defaults to account's timezone, but the timezone can be explicitly set to "Americas/Los_Angeles", more details are here.

If these checks do not resolve the issue, please share the exact API request you are running so we can troubleshoot it directly.

Thanks,

[jignesh boricha]

Hello  Google AdMob Support Team

Greetings of the day!

I hope you’re doing well.

Thanks for your kind reply. We have gone through your message and suggestions, and after deep investigation, found that the root cause appears to be a timezone difference between the two systems.

My AdMob account timezone is set to Asia/Kolkata (GMT+5:30), but the AdMob API seems to always generate reports in the America/Los_Angeles (PST/PDT) timezone. This results in noticeable discrepancies in daily metrics such as impressions, clicks, and estimated earnings when comparing API data with the AdMob UI.

We also confirmed the following:

• The currency in both API and UI is the same (USD).

• When setting "time_zone": "Asia/Kolkata" in the API request, I receive this error:
  “time_zone should be either empty or America/Los_Angeles for reporting request from API.”
  This indicates that custom timezones are currently not supported in the AdMob API.

Because of this, daily data from the API overlaps across different dates when compared to the UI reports, making it difficult to reconcile metrics accurately for IST-based accounts.

Could you please clarify the following:

1. Does the AdMob API currently enforce the America/Los_Angeles timezone for all report data?

2. Are there any plans to support account-based or custom timezones (like Asia/Kolkata) in future API updates?

3. Is there any recommended workaround to align API results with the UI timezone for reporting accuracy?

This clarification would help ensure consistency in reporting for developers and publishers operating in non-U.S. timezones.

Thank you for your time and support.

We look forward to your response.

Warm regards,

[AdMob API Developer Forum]

Thanks for the update and your detail investigation.

Replying to all the points from your last message:

1. timezone is an optional field so if it is not set, the timezone configured in the account will be used i.e Asia/Kolkata in your case.

2. In the near term, we will continue supporting only two types of timezone: the one configured in the account and the optional America/Los_Angeles
3. As suggested in the #1, timezone is optional field in the API. Skipping it would force the API to use the account configured timezone. This would ensure alignment between UI and API.


Can you please confirm if skipping the timezone in the request body works? Or the API is still returning data in America/Los_Angeles timezone even if the field is skipped?


Thanks again. Please feel free to reach out if you have any other concern related to this topic.