Getting started with the Google Ads API

In this advanced guide, we’ll break down the key features and functionalities of the Google Ads API, how to integrate it into your existing applications, and share some automation techniques for large-scale campaigns.

Google Ads API key features and functionalities for power users

The Google Ads API offers a diverse set of tools to automate and optimize your advertising campaigns. By leveraging this API, you can gain granular control over your campaigns, enhance targeting, and improve overall performance.

Let’s explore some of the key features and functionalities that can help you maximize your ROI:

Ad customization and dynamic parameters

Ad customization and dynamic parameters allow you to personalize your ad campaigns and target specific audiences with tailored messaging. By leveraging feed-based and dynamic elements, you can create highly effective ad copy and targeting strategies that drive better results.

1. Feed-based elements: This includes information from your product feed such as titles, descriptions, prices, and images. By incorporating feed-based elements into your ad copy, you can dynamically generate ads that have a higher chance of converting.

This is especially helpful for:

• Highlighting discounted prices: Dynamic ads can automatically display your sale prices, enticing customers with a "Save {product.discount_percentage}%" message.

• Creating urgency: Show limited-time offers or low stock with messages like
  Now only {product.sale_price} or Only {product.stock_count} left!

2. Dynamic parameters: These parameters allow you to insert specific values into your ad copy or targeting criteria based on user behavior, demographics, or other relevant factors. For example, you can use dynamic parameters to display personalized product recommendations or tailor your ad copy to a user's location.

Targeting and audience segmentation

The Google Ads API provides the tools to implement sophisticated targeting strategies, enabling you to reach the right audience at the right time.

One method is “Audience segments”, also known as user lists, which are groups of people with specific interests, intents, or demographic information. You can target audience segments directly by creating and targeting a UserList, these include:

• crm_based_user_list: User list of CRM users you provide.

• rule_based_user_list: User list generated by a rule or set of rules, typically based on actions the user did—or didn't— take.

• logical_user_list: User list that is a custom combination of user lists and user interests.

• basic_user_list: User list targeting as a collection of conversion or remarketing actions.

• similar_user_list: Output-only user list of users which are similar to users from another list.

• lookalike_user_list: User list composed of users similar to those of a configurable set of seed user lists.

Dynamic retargeting in the Google Ads API enables you to show personalized ads based on specific products or categories viewed on your website. Dynamic remarketing for eCommerce brands requires a product feed provided by Merchant Center and the Google tag installed on all the pages of your website that send remarketing information.

Using the remarketing parameters (e.g. Product ID, Product Price, Product Category) you can personalize your retargeting ads.
For example, you could show a user an ad for a specific product they viewed on your website, a similar product from the same category, or a product at a similar price point.

Additionally, geo-targeting, also known as location targeting, allows you to show your ads to users in specific geographic regions, such as cities, countries, regions, or multiple locations. For instance, you can target all the cities where you have a physical store location. You can even target campaigns by proximity to a location, e.g. 10km outside of London.

Bid management and strategies

The Google Ads API offers a range of customizable bidding strategies that allow you to automate your bidding process and achieve your campaign goals. These include:

1. Custom bidding strategies

Google Ads API offers a variety of bidding strategy types, each with its own purpose and mechanics. Here's a breakdown of the available bidding strategies:

Manual bidding strategies:

• MANUAL_CPC: This is the most basic strategy, where you set a maximum CPC bid for each keyword or ad group.

• MANUAL_CPM: This strategy is used for Display Network campaigns and allows you to set a maximum CPM bid.

• MANUAL_CPV: This is used for TrueView video ads and allows you to set a maximum CPV bid.

Automated bidding strategies:

• ENHANCED_CPC: This automatically adjusts your bids to improve conversion rates within your budget.

• MAXIMIZE_CONVERSIONS: This aims to get the most conversions for your budget.

• MAXIMIZE_CONVERSION_VALUE: This aims to maximize the total conversion value for your budget.

• TARGET_CPA: This helps you set a target CPA and automatically adjusts your bids to achieve it.

• TARGET_ROAS: This helps you set a target ROAS and automatically adjusts your bids to achieve it.

• TARGET_IMPRESSION_SHARE: This helps you target a specific percentage of ad impressions for your keywords.

2. Bid modifiers

Bid modifiers allow you to adjust bids for specific criteria, such as device type, location, or audience segment. This helps you optimize your bids for the most valuable traffic. Examples include:

• Device bid modifiers: Increase bids for mobile devices if they have a higher conversion rate.

• Location bid modifiers: Increase bids for specific geographic locations with higher potential.

• Audience bid modifiers: Increase bids for specific audience segments that are more likely to convert.

Google Ads API integration strategies

Integrating the Google Ads API with your existing tools and data can unlock valuable insights and automation opportunities.

Integrating the Google Ads API with your data warehouse or CRM

Integrating the Google Ads API with your first-party data can refine and enrich your audience targeting. Here are some use cases:

• Customer segmentation: Segment customers based on purchase history, demographics, and behavior to create highly targeted ad groups.

• Lookalike audiences: Identify similar users to your existing customer base and expand your reach.

• Custom affinity audiences: Create custom audiences based on specific interests or behaviors derived from your CRM data.

Synchronizing with analytics tools

Integrating the Google Ads API with analytics tools like Google Analytics provides a comprehensive view of your advertising performance and customer behavior. This enables you to understand the full customer journey with end-to-end tracking and identify high-value customer segments.

By integrating the Google Ads API with Looker you can create a unified data platform where you can consolidate Google Ads data with other marketing and business data sources. You can also create tailored dashboards to visualize key Google Ads metrics and trends, such as clicks, impressions, conversions, and cost-per-acquisition.

Using webhooks for real-time updates and responsive ad adjustments

Webhooks enable real-time communication between your Google Ads account and your applications. Here are some examples of when you might set up webhooks:

• To automatically update product feeds to reflect inventory changes, pricing updates, and new product launches.

• To trigger ad campaigns for flash sales or limited-time offers based on predefined schedules.

• To receive notifications when budgets are nearing depletion to avoid campaign pauses.

• To monitor key metrics and receive alerts for significant performance drops or spikes.

Automation techniques for large-scale campaigns

Do you run multiple ad campaigns on Google? Setting up scripts and workflows for routine tasks, such as bid changes, budget adjustments, and keyword updates can help you optimize your campaigns for better performance and higher ROI.

You can create scripts to automatically adjust bids based on performance metrics like conversion rate, cost-per-acquisition (CPA), or return on ad spend (ROAS). For instance, a script could increase bids for high-performing keywords and decrease bids for low-performing ones. You can also use scripts to dynamically shift budgets to top-performing campaigns or allocate more budget to campaigns with higher potential; or implement scripts to add, pause, or remove keywords based on specific criteria.

Example: Let's say you have a large-scale campaign with hundreds of ad groups. You might want to automatically increase bids for ad groups with a conversion rate higher than 5% and decrease bids for those with a conversion rate lower than 2%.

Automating reporting

Using the Google Ads API, you can automate the generation of customized reports with key performance indicators (KPIs) like clicks, impressions, conversions, and cost-per-click. These reports can be delivered directly to your inbox or integrated into your data visualization software.

Additionally, you can leverage the API to extract deeper insights from your data. For instance, you could analyze the performance of different ad groups, devices, and demographics to identify optimization opportunities.

Machine learning and AI

Leveraging Google’s machine learning algorithms and AI-powered optimizations can help you automate your Google Ads campaign and optimize for performance.

Common use cases:

• Automated bidding strategies: Use machine learning algorithms to optimize bids in real-time with the Target CPA and Target ROAS bidding strategies.

• Ad scheduling: Automate ad scheduling to show your ads at the optimal times when your target audience is most active.

• Ad creative optimization: Use machine learning to test different ad creatives and identify the most effective combinations.

Conclusion

The Google Ads API can help you automate routine tasks, handle large scale campaigns and complex strategies, and optimize your campaigns in real time by automatically adjusting bids, budgets and targeting settings.

But it’s not without its challenges. To make the most of the Google Ads API you need technical expertise and a solid understanding of programming languages and API concepts. It’s also a significant time investment due to the initial setup and the ongoing maintenance. Not to mention the potential development costs associated with building and maintaining the API.

The good news is that there are tools built on the Google Ads API that simplify the complexity of API interactions, allowing you to reap the benefits of automation and optimization without the steep learning curve.

Optimize your Google Ads campaigns with Channable’s PPC tool

Channable’s PPC tool for Google Ads allows you to easily create complete ad campaign structures for multiple products and languages at scale.

Our tool also uses campaign and keyword automation rules to maximize your return on investment and avoid overspending. You can set up rules that will automatically adjust your bids, add or remove keywords, move keywords between campaigns, or blacklist certain keywords based on specific criteria.

No matter your growth stage, Channable provides all the key solutions businesses need to successfully advertise on Google, Amazon and Bol. Get started with our PPC Optimization tool.