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This checklist will take you through the process to get started with the
Google Ads API. The steps are divided into several categories, some of which you might
decide to skip if they aren't applicable to your needs. To get the most from
this document, read and execute steps in order.
The list contains three types of items:
Todo: Steps that are required in order to perform a certain
task
or set up a certain part of your tool.
If you're printing the checklist, you can use the checkboxes on the left to
mark which steps are completed. This checklist provides a recommended reading
order for the information found in the Google Ads API docs.
Access and setup
Obtain your developer
token from the API Center of your top-level manager account. All
fields on the API Access form must be completed, and the Terms and Conditions
accepted. Make sure the API contact email you provide leads to a
regularly monitored inbox. You will be issued a developer token with the
test account access
level.
To get your token approved for production access, you'll need to fill out our
follow-up application form
and explain how you intend to use the API.
You'll also need to provide a design document. You can use
our
template to get started. Provide as much detail as you can.
Our token review team will contact you if they need more information, but
you can also reach out through our
contact form if there
is no feedback within 2 business days.
Set up a client library
We use OAuth 2.0 for authenticating your requests against the API.
Follow the instructions in our
OAuth 2.0 guide to set up the credentials
for OAuth 2.0. For troubleshooting, you can use the OAuth 2.0 playground.
We provide client libraries for some
common programming languages. Download the library for the language you want to
use and set up its configuration file with your previously obtained credentials.
Developer Token - Access Levels
Read about Access Levels, and decide
whether your tool will require more than 15,000 operations per
day at some point in the future. If it will, you will need to apply for
Standard Access for
unlimited mutate operations and
GoogleAdsService.Search and
GoogleAdsService.SearchStream requests per day. However, this is
still subject to the daily limit of 1,000 get operations.
Review the Rate Sheet to
understand how operations are calculated for your access level. Note,
GoogleAdsService.Search requests with the page_token
field set does not count towards the operations limit.
Run through
Making Your First API Call,
which explains how to get campaigns using the API. All objects are reachable
in a similar fashion, so it's worth memorizing the structure.
Take a quick overview
of reporting, and an
example to summarize the
performance of an account over the last 30 days using
GoogleAdsService
as the single source of truth for reporting in Google Ads reporting.
Read through
Google Ads Query Language (GAQL)
to understand the query grammar, query structure, and the concepts of resource,
segment, and metrics.
Use the editor in this tool to build a Google Ads Query Language statement
for a particular resource; for example an AdGroup. Copy and paste the generated
GAQL statement into your application.
Keyword research
If you’re not familiar with our
Keyword Planner tool,
try it out to see how keyword planning works in the Google Ads UI.
Read about the
Payment methods and
settings to understand the available billing options in Google Ads, such as
automatic payments, manual payments, monthly invoicing (credit line).
Check out the
Billing Setup to understand how to
manage payment profiles and payment accounts programmatically.
Read about the
Account Budget to
understand how budgets can automatically be assigned to accounts.
Contact your business representative at Google to apply to be enrolled for
monthly billing.
Get a service account key
if your application just needs access to your own Merchant Center account. But
if you’re writing a third-party application that needs access to your clients’
Merchant Center accounts, review the
Authorize Requests
guide with OAuth 2.0.
If you’re not familiar with the
Recommendations and
Change history
functionalities, try them out in the Google Ads UI.
RecommendationService
Read our guide on
how to use the RecommendationService
to retrieve and apply Google’s recommendations to your account to increase the
overall ads performance.
Read our guide on
how to use the ChangeStatusService
to retrieve the change history to keep track of changes to your account, such as
campaigns and ads.
Add a bookmark to the latest
Release Notes and review
the main changes in each version.
Replace calls to the old version of the client library with calls to
the new version.
Follow this blog
to subscribe to our RSS feed to get blog posts by email, and check
the forum to
get the latest information regarding the Google Ads API.
Make sure the API contact email registered in the
API Center of your main
manager account is up to date, as this is how we contact you if we find any
technical issues related to your usage of the API.
Google Analytics provides in-depth reporting on how people use your website.
You can use Google Analytics to learn what people do after clicking your ads.
Google Tag Manager is a tag management system (TMS) that lets you to
quickly and easily update tracking codes and related code fragments,
collectively known as tags, on your website or mobile app.
