Builders

Builders are the standard way to create entities in Google Ads scripts. Builders allow you to build a Google Ads entity either synchronously or asynchronously. You can also check whether the operation was successful or not, and take appropriate actions depending on the operation’s outcome. The following code snippet shows how to create a keyword using a builder.

// Retrieve your ad group.
let adGroup = AdsApp.adGroups().get().next();

// Create a keyword operation.
let keywordOperation = adGroup.newKeywordBuilder()
    .withCpc(1.2)
    .withText("shoes")
    .withFinalUrl("http://www.example.com/shoes")
    .build();

// Optional: examine the outcome. The call to isSuccessful()
// will block until the operation completes.
if (keywordOperation.isSuccessful()) {
  // Get the result.
  let keyword = keywordOperation.getResult();
} else {
  // Handle the errors.
  let errors = keywordOperation.getErrors();
}

Any entity that can be created using Google Ads scripts does so using this builder pattern.

Performance considerations

By default, Google Ads scripts executes its operations asynchronously. This allows scripts to group your operations as batches, and achieve high performance. However, calling the Operation methods like isSuccessful() and getResult() forces Google Ads scripts to flush its pending operations list, and thus may lead to poor performance. Instead, create an array to hold the operations, then iterate through that array to retrieve the results.

for (let i = 0; i < keywords.length; i++)
  let keywordOperation = adGroup
    .newKeywordBuilder()
    .withText(keywords[i])
    .build();

  // Bad: retrieving the result in the same
  // loop that creates the operation
  // leads to poor performance.
  let newKeyword =
      keywordOperation.getResult();
  newKeyword.applyLabel("New keywords”);
}

// Create an array to hold the operations
let operations = [];

for (let i = 0; i < keywords.length; i++) {
  let keywordOperation = adGroup
    .newKeywordBuilder()
    .withText(keywords[i])
    .build();
  operations.push(keywordOperation);
}

// Process the operations separately. Allows
// Google Ads scripts to group operations into
// batches.
for (let i = 0; i < operations.length; i++) {
  let newKeyword = operations[i].getResult();
  newKeyword.applyLabel("New keywords”);
}