A partner link is a mechanism that allows a data partner to manage the audiences or events in an advertiser's account using credentials for a Google Account with access to the data partner's account. Using partner links is an alternative to requiring credentials for a Google Account with direct access to the advertiser's account.
We recommend that you work with your Google representative to allow advertisers
to manage partner links to your data partner account in the Google Ads, Display & Video 360, or
Google Ad Manager UI. A data partner only needs to use the
PartnerLinkService to create or delete
links if managing links to their data partner account isn't available in the UI,
or if they prefer to offer partner linking functionality within their
application.
Benefits of partner links
As a data partner, using a partner link to manage advertiser accounts provides several advantages compared to the direct access approach.
| Partner link | Direct access | |
|---|---|---|
| Credential management |
Once you create a partner link in an advertiser account, all subsequent requests use a single set of credentials for a Google Account with access to the data partner account. Credentials for the advertiser account are short-lived. You can discard them once you've used them to create a partner link.
|
Requires separate credentials for every advertiser
account.
Credentials for the advertiser account are long-lived. You must securely store the credentials for every advertiser, and then securely retrieve the specific credentials for each advertiser when you want to manage audiences or events for that advertiser.
|
| Change history | Changes made by the data partner are clearly identified. The user associated with each change is the Google Account in the data partner account. | Changes made by the data partner are associated with the advertiser Google Account associated with the credentials, making it difficult to differentiate between changes made by the advertiser and changes made by the data partner on behalf of the advertiser. |
Data partner workflow
Here are the steps for a data partner to use partner links to manage an advertiser account:
Use the credentials for the advertiser account to Create a partner link.
Discard the credentials for the advertiser account. You don't need them now that you created the partner link.
For all subsequent requests to manage audiences or events in the advertiser account, use credentials for a Google Account that's a user in your data partner account. Configure destinations and headers to access the advertiser account using the partner link.
Get credentials for the advertiser account
To create or delete partner links, you need credentials for a Google Account that's a user in the advertiser account. The credentials must have the Data Manager API scope:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/datamanager
To obtain the credentials for an advertiser account, build your own OAuth flow to authenticate your users. There are multiple app types discussed as part of the Google Identity documentation, and the configuration you need to support each app type. All these app types are supported by Data Manager API, but we recommend either Using OAuth 2.0 for Web Server Applications or OAuth 2.0 for Client-side Web Applications for obtaining advertiser credentials for creating partner links.
As you complete the process, configure your application to authenticate for the Data Manager API scope:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/datamanager