New and Improved in the Google Ads API

The Google Ads API introduces new features and improvements when upgrading from the AdWords API. This page details some of the highlights of those improvements. For a more detailed list of changes in the Google Ads API, see the release notes.

Key points

Innovation: Extending our innovative ad platform

Expect more frequent releases with additional features and improved upwards compatibility. The many new features such as automated recommendations to help increase campaign performance, are just the start of our efforts to provide an innovative and full-featured advertising API. With more frequent releases, the Google Ads API can roll out new features and bug fixes more often.

Productivity: Faster, easier to build applications

The Google Ads API simplifies building applications with less code, making time to market faster for applications. There’s seamless integration between reports and updates, along with a flexible and intuitive query language for scalable reporting. This update makes the API consistent with Google's latest standards.

The legacy AdWords API will be shutdown in April 2022

September 2018 was the last release of the AdWords API. As announced in April 2021, the AdWords API will sunset April 27, 2022. As a result, new features will only appear in the Google Ads API, and there may be deprecations in the AdWords API, such as feed-based extensions.

Detailed improvements

New features and innovations

• [New] Performance Max campaigns
• [New] Optimization Score & Recommendations
• [New] Lead form extensions
• [New] User access management
• [New] Account management precision with the login-customer-id. login-customer-id recognizes access levels of the same user at different levels in the account hierarchy and integrates with billing that can exist at multiple levels in the hierarchy.
• [New] Additional metrics on assets
• [New] Target impression share bidding strategy
• [New] Additional ad types
  • Shopping Comparison Listing ads
  • Hotel ads
  • App engagement ads
• [New + Improved] Billing
  • No allowlisting required
  • More transparency (e.g., billing setup errors and statuses)
  • Manage billing setups directly.
• [New] Invoices. Retrieve monthly invoice details, with a link to download the invoice PDF.
• [New + Improved] Smart bidding support such as for managing cross-account bidding strategies in manager accounts, and the ability to attach them to campaigns in customer accounts
• [New] Additional campaign types
  • [Beta] Smart campaigns
  • Local campaigns
• [New] Ad labels
• [Improved] Keyword Planning, including better consistency with the Google Ads user interface and providing more parameters
• [New] AccountLinkService manages links between Google Ads accounts and data partner or third-party app analytics accounts.

Improved developer productivity

• [New] The GoogleAdsService permits mutating many objects across different services in a consistent way synchronously. Independent operations can be completed in a single request with the partial failure setting. The operations in this service can also be used in asynchronous batch processing for a homogeneous programming experience.

• [New] Interactive Query Builder tool to help construct and validate GAQL queries

• [New] The Google Ads API provides both a gRPC and REST interface. The REST interface can be helpful for debugging, while providing compatibility with your other REST services. Protobufs and JSON offer improved readability over XML.

• [New] Change event service and change status service to retrieve the change history of a Google Ads account

• [Improved] Reporting

  • Report responses contain resource objects that can be used in mutates.
  • Queries are simplified and all queries go through GoogleAdsService rather than different services.
  • All reports are multi-attribution only, mirroring other Google Ads interfaces such as the user interface.
  • Results can be streamed or paginated.

• [Improved] Compatibility with existing credentials for ease of migration. The same developer token, client ID and client secret can be used with both the AdWords API and the Google Ads API. Entity or Resource IDs are the same in both APIs, allowing easy migration and consistency with existing data.