Application performance

Page Summary

Reusing the GoogleAdsClient helps optimize performance by caching gRPC channels and reusing access tokens.
Using access tokens from a manager level account can reduce the number of round trips required to refresh tokens.
SearchStream often provides better performance than Search for downloading reports by using a single persistent connection.
Compiling your app with Release configuration and profiling are important steps for identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks.
Utilizing async methods, adjusting garbage collection settings, and turning off logging in production can further enhance app performance.

The Google Ads .NET client library simplifies your app's interactions with the Google Ads API, with minimal configuration on your part. However, the overall performance depends heavily on how the library is used and integrated with your app.

This guide covers performance optimizations that are specific to .NET apps, and complements the best practices that are generally applicable to the Google Ads API.

Reuse GoogleAdsClient whenever possible

GoogleAdsClient represents a user's session when making API calls. It provides optimizations such as:

Caching the gRPC channels used by API services. This reduces the setup time when making initial API calls.
Reusing access tokens when possible. This reduces the number of round trips that the Google Ads .NET client library has to perform to refresh access tokens.

Use access tokens from a manager level account when possible

If you have an access token issued at a manager account level, you can use it to make API calls against all Google Ads client accounts under that account hierarchy. When combined with reusing GoogleAdsClient instances, this can further reduce the number of round trips the client library has to perform to refresh access tokens.

Use SearchStream instead of Search whenever possible

The Google Ads API provides two main ways to retrieve objects: GoogleAdsService.Search (which uses pagination) and GoogleAdsService.SearchStream (which uses streaming).

While Search sends multiple paginated requests to download an entire report, SearchStream sends a single request and initiates a persistent connection with the Google Ads API regardless of the report size. By eliminating the round-trip network time required to request each individual page of a Search response, SearchStream generally offers improved performance over paging. See the streaming reports guide to learn more about when to choose each method.

Manually manage access token refreshes

In certain stateless environments such as Google Cloud Functions, it might not be feasible to reuse GoogleAdsClient instances across invocations. Such environments have their own best practices to persist and reuse data.

In Google.Ads.GoogleAds v27.0.0 and later, you can inject your own pre-configured ICredential instance directly on GoogleAdsConfig using the Credentials property and disable channel caching (UseChannelCache = false).

If you prefer to encapsulate credential creation in a custom configuration class (or are using an earlier version of the library), you can extend the GoogleAdsConfig class to perform your own access token refreshes as follows:

// Create your own config class by extending the GoogleAdsConfig class.
class MyGoogleAdsConfig : GoogleAdsConfig
{
    public MyGoogleAdsConfig() : base()
    {
        // Disable the library's built-in channel caching mechanism.
        UseChannelCache = false;
    }

    protected override ICredential CreateCredentials()
    {
        // Create your own ICredential object here. You may refer to the
        // default implementation of GoogleAdsConfig.CreateCredentials
        // for an example.
    }
}

// Use your own config class when initializing the GoogleAdsClient instance.
MyGoogleAdsConfig myConfig = new MyGoogleAdsConfig();
GoogleAdsClient client = new GoogleAdsClient(myConfig);

Compile for release build

Make sure you compile your app using the Release configuration when deploying to the server. When using the Debug configuration, your app compiles with full symbolic debug information and without compiler optimizations.

Profile your app

Profile your app both for CPU and memory usage to identify performance bottlenecks. Visual Studio provides Diagnostic tools to help profile your app. There are also other commercial profiling tools that are available.

Use async methods

Asynchronous programming using the async-await paradigm helps avoid performance bottlenecks and enhances the overall responsiveness of your app. The Google Ads .NET library generates async methods for all services and RPC methods.

Async methods cancellation

You can use the callSettings parameter to pass a CancellationToken to async methods such as SearchStreamAsync:

using CancellationTokenSource cancellationTokenSource =
    new CancellationTokenSource();
cancellationTokenSource.CancelAfter(3000);
CallSettings callSettings =
    CallSettings.FromCancellationToken(cancellationTokenSource.Token);

string query = "SELECT campaign.name FROM campaign";
var request = new SearchGoogleAdsStreamRequest()
{
    CustomerId = customerId.ToString(),
    Query = query,
};

GoogleAdsServiceClient googleAdsService = client.GetService(
    Services.V25.GoogleAdsService);

await googleAdsService.SearchStreamAsync(
    request,
    (SearchGoogleAdsStreamResponse resp) =>
    {
        foreach (GoogleAdsRow googleAdsRow in resp.Results)
        {
            // Process the row.
        }
    },
    callSettings);

Turn off logging when you can

The Google Ads .NET library turns off logging by default and uses a lazy logging approach that gives your app better performance. If you turn on logging during development, make sure you turn it off in the production environment. If you need to monitor for specific failing requests in production, you can do one or more of the following steps without adversely affecting your app's performance:

Turn on only the summary logs.
Set the full logs to the ERROR level.
Save the request ID for specific failing requests so you can share it with support channels.

See the logging guide to learn more.

Use the ReadyToRun option

Modern .NET supports precompiling your binaries to a specific platform and architecture by setting PublishReadyToRun to true, and then publishing the binary by specifying a valid RuntimeIdentifier. See the ReadyToRun deployment guide to learn more.

Use TieredCompilation

TieredCompilation (enabled by default in modern .NET versions such as .NET 8) allows .NET to identify hotspots and improve runtime performance. Tiered compilation works well with ReadyToRun because it can use the pre-generated image for fast startup and then recompile hot methods with full optimizations. See the TieredCompilation guide to learn more.

Fine-tune your garbage collection (GC)

.NET provides two general profiles for garbage collection (GC): a workstation profile and a server profile. These two profiles have differing performance trade-offs. Dedicated server apps using the Google Ads .NET library often perform better when running in a server profile.

You can benefit from fine-tuning the following GC settings:

Server garbage collection: Server garbage collection allows the .NET runtime to give higher throughput to a Google Ads API app by operating on multiple GC heaps and threads. See the server GC guide for more details. You can turn on server garbage collection by adding the following lines to your app's .csproj file:
```
<PropertyGroup>
  <ServerGarbageCollection>true</ServerGarbageCollection>
</PropertyGroup>
```
Concurrent garbage collection: You can turn on concurrent garbage collection to give the .NET GC a dedicated thread for garbage collection in generation 2. This setting can be useful when processing large reports. You can turn on concurrent garbage collection by adding the following lines to your app's .csproj file:
```
<PropertyGroup>
  <ConcurrentGarbageCollection>true</ConcurrentGarbageCollection>
</PropertyGroup>
```
Retain VM garbage collection: The RetainVMGarbageCollection setting configures whether segments of virtual memory that should be deleted are put on a standby list for future use, or are released back to the operating system (OS). You can turn on virtual memory retention by adding the following lines to your app's .csproj file:
```
<PropertyGroup>
  <RetainVMGarbageCollection>true</RetainVMGarbageCollection>
</PropertyGroup>
```

You can fine-tune your GC by choosing a setup that balances workstation and server behavior. All the relevant GC settings can be specified in your .NET app's runtimeconfig.json file, through environment variables, or in your App.config.