Report Streaming

There are three methods for retrieving entities and reporting data with the Google Ads API.

This guide primarily focuses on streaming data from GoogleAdsService. Here are high-level distinctions for the three data retrieval methods:

GoogleAdsService.SearchStream GoogleAdsService.Search GET requests
Suitable for production code Yes Yes No (for debugging only)
Service GoogleAdsService GoogleAdsService Resource specific services (for example, CampaignService)
Scenario Fetching objects and reports Fetching objects and reports Fetching objects
Response Stream of GoogleAdsRow objects Pages of GoogleAdsRow objects One object (for example, Campaign)
Response's fields Only those specified in the query Only those specified in the query All fields populated
Daily limits Daily limits based on access levels Daily limits based on access levels 1,000 requests per day

While Search can send multiple paginated requests to download the entire report, SearchStream sends a single request and initiates a persistent connection with the Google Ads API regardless of report size.

For SearchStream, data packets start to download immediately with the entire result cached in a data buffer. Your code can start reading the buffered data without having to wait for the entire stream to finish.

By eliminating the round-trip network time required to request each individual page of a Search response, depending on your app, SearchStream can offer improved performance over paging, especially for bigger reports.

Example

Take a report that consists of 100,000 rows for example. The following table breaks down the accounting differences between the two methods.

SearchStream Search
Page size Not Applicable 10,000 rows per page
Number of API requests 1 request 10 requests
Number of API responses 1 continuous stream 10 responses

Performance factors

In general, we recommend SearchStream over Search for the following reasons.

  • For single page reports (under 10,000 rows): No significant performance differences between the two methods.

  • For multiple page reports: SearchStream is typically faster since multiple roundtrips are avoided and reading/writing from disk cache is less of a factor.

Rate limits

Daily limits for both methods adhere to the standard limits and access levels of your developer token. A single query or report is counted as one operation regardless of the result being paged or streamed.