Campaigns

A Google Ads campaign is a set of one or more ad groups (ads, keywords, and bids) that share a budget, location targeting, and other settings. Campaigns are typically used to organize categories of products or services offered by an advertiser.

Items that can be set at the campaign level include bids, budget, language, location, distribution for the Google Network, and more. Large advertisers typically create separate ad campaigns to run ads in different locations or using different budgets.

Campaign types

Campaign types are centered around Google's advertising networks: the Google Search Network, the Google Display Network, and the YouTube Network.

These networks make up all the places where your ads can appear, including Google sites, websites that show relevant Google ads, and other placements—like mobile apps.

You choose a network setting by selecting a campaign type for your campaign. The API supports the following campaign types:

You can use the API to create and manage campaigns optimized for different marketing objectives:

Differences from the Google Ads UI

Not all campaign types in the Google Ads UI are supported in the API, such as Video Campaigns. Video campaign metrics are available for retrieval in the API. However, video campaigns cannot be mutated at all from the API, including simple operations such as pausing or enabling as well as complex operations like organizing, changing criteria, or adding ad groups.

Campaign subtypes

Campaign subtypes in the Google Ads UI, such as Standard and All features, help UI users find relevant campaign options, but there is no corresponding attribute in the API's Campaign object. This UI column is similar to the AdvertisingChannelType and AdvertisingChannelSubType fields in the API, but there is not a one-to-one mapping between these fields and Campaign subtype in the UI.

For example, a Search-only campaign created using the API will always be an All features campaign from the UI perspective.

Create campaigns