Upcoming Budget Optimizer Changes

[AdWords API Advisor]

We want to take a minute to notify all AdWords API developers about an
upcoming change in the way bids are handled in campaigns that make use
of the Budget Optimizer. If none of your campaigns use the Budget
Optimizer, or if you never plan on turning the Budget Optimizer off,
then feel free to stop reading (and get back to trying out the new
v2009 Sandbox!).

Each Campaign object has a budgetOptimizerSettings property, which in
turn has a takeOnOptimizedBids setting. Currently, if
takeOnOptimizedBids is set to false and you turn off the Budget
Optimizer in a campaign, the original bids that were manually set for
the ad groups and criteria contained in the campaign will be restored.
In other words, the AdWords API will save your old bids from before
the Budget Optimizer was turned on, and restore them when it is turned
off. If takeOnOptimizedBids is set to true, however, the old bids will
not be restored when the Budget Optimizer is turned off. Instead, the
last bids that were automatically set by the Budget Optimizer will
persist for the ad groups and criteria in your campaign.

You can, if you wish, use the AdWords API to manually update the bids
for ad groups and criteria once the Budget Optimizer is turned off in
either scenario.

The upcoming change will effectively treat takeOnOptimizedBids as if
it were set to true (regardless of what it is actually set to) for all
campaigns using the Budget Optimizer. Once the Budget Optimizer is
turned off, all bids will be set to the last bid used by the Budget
Optimizer. This change will match the behavior currently in place when
the Budget Optimizer is turned off via the AdWords web interface.

We're planning on making this change to AdWords API behavior on May
19. It is not likely that you will have to make any substantial
changes to your code in advance of this change, but please take the
new behavior into account when you write code that turns the Budget
Optimizer off.

-Jeffrey Posnick, AdWords API Team