Upcoming extended AdWords API/Scripts, Ad Exchange, and DFP API Downtime

Update: Ad Exchange will be affected by the downtime as well. Please see below for details.



As previously mentioned, we have an upcoming AdWords, Ad Exchange, and DFP service outage. This will occur on Saturday, September 22 -- AdWords, Ad Exchange, and DFP systems will be unavailable from approximately 10:00 am to 8:00 pm Pacific Time (17:00 Saturday to 03:00 Sunday GMT) due to system maintenance.



AdWords

During this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual (with the settings you established as of 10am PST), but you won’t be able to make SOAP API calls or download reports. Requests to the AdWords API will fail with an HTTP 50x error during the maintenance window. Please also keep in mind that any automated rules scheduled during this time will not run and AdWords scripts will not execute during this period. We encourage you to verify your campaign settings prior to the outage.



Ad Exchange

During this time, your ad serving will continue to run per changes made prior to downtime period, but you will not be able to make API calls to Ad Exchange Buyer SOAP API. On Ad Exchange Buyer REST API, only the Direct Deals related API calls will be affected. For the Ad Exchange Real-Time Bidding Protocol, you will not be able to make changes to pre-targeting settings, everything else should continue to run as usual.



DFP

As mentioned above, ad serving will continue to run per changes made prior to the downtime period. If you use the audience feature in your network, any API call to the AudienceSegmentService service will fail with a SegmentError.UNEXPECTED_ERROR error. Also, if you target any audience segments in your line items, any calls to LineItemService, ForecastService, or LineItemCreativeAssociationService that involve those line items will fail.



We apologize for any inconvenience, and appreciate your patience as our engineers work to keep AdWords, Ad Exchange, and DFP running smoothly.



 - Kevin Winter, Ads Developer Relations Team

AdWords scripts - now available to all AdWords users

In June we announced the limited release of AdWords scripts, a new AdWords tool that enables you to make changes to an AdWords account, such as updating keywords and ad copy or outputting account statistics, by writing simple JavaScript programs. Today we’re pleased to announce that AdWords scripts is available to all advertisers globally. In addition, we’re launching several frequently requested features that enable advertisers to:

• Run more complex scripts - We extended the length of script executions from 5 minutes to 30 minutes, allowing you to make more complex changes. In addition, we’ve expanded the entity limit to 100K.


• Use real-time data to manage campaigns - We’re adding support for Ad Parameters, which allow you to update numeric values in ads without having to delete and re-enter ad copy or wait for policy checks. Here’s a tutorial showing the use of US Geological Survey data to insert dynamic ad text.


• Automate scripts with scheduling - You can now schedule scripts to run a single time, daily, weekly, or monthly.

To help you get started with AdWords scripts, we’re hosting two training events in the coming weeks.

• On Tuesday, September 11th at 11:30am PST / 2:30am EST, we’ll be hosting a Hangout on Air through Google Developers Live, targeted to advertisers with more advanced coding skills. Questions asked via Moderator will be answered at the end of the presentation.


• On Thursday, September 13th at 10amPST / 1pmEST, we’ll be hosting a Learn with Google webinar targeted to advertisers with basic JavaScript experience. During this webinar, we will provide an overview of what can be accomplished with Scripts, walk through ways to customize pre-set Scripts, and show you how to write Scripts from scratch. Click here to register.

Additional resources, including a getting started guide and tutorials, are available at https://developers.google.com/adwords/scripts/. You can also join the AdWords Scripts Forum to get help or share advice on AdWords scripts.



Posted by Katie Miller, Google Ads Team

Upcoming AdWords API/Scripts and DFP API Downtime

On Saturday, September 8, AdWords and DFP systems will be unavailable from approximately 10:00am to 11:00am Pacific Time (17:00 to 18:00 GMT) due to system maintenance. A longer downtime will also be scheduled in the next few weeks -- please stay tuned for another blog post with more specific details.



AdWords

During this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual (with the settings you established as of 10am PST), but you won’t be able to sign into your account or make changes. Requests to the AdWords API will fail with an HTTP 50x error during the maintenance window. Please also keep in mind that any automated rules scheduled during this time will not run and AdWords scripts will not execute during this period. We encourage you to verify your campaign settings prior to the outage.



DFP

As mentioned above, ad serving will continue to run per changes made prior to the downtime period. If you use the audience feature in your network, any API call to the AudienceSegmentService service will fail with a SegmentError.UNEXPECTED_ERROR error. Also, if you target any audience segments in your line items, any calls to LineItemService, ForecastService, or LineItemCreativeAssociationService that involve those line items will fail.



We apologize for any inconvenience, and appreciate your patience as our engineers work to keep AdWords and DFP running smoothly.



 - Kevin Winter, Ads Developer Relations Team

Introducing the new Ads Developers Google+ Page

Today we are excited to introduce a new channel for communication - Ads Developers Google+ Page. It's a place to stay informed, engaged and connected on Ads products and developer tools.

Add our Google+ page to your circles for the latest product and feature announcements, best practices, case studies, as well as opportunities to interact with and learn from Google's Ads Developer Relations team and other members of the developer community.

We look forward to having one place to bring timely updates, concise announcements, and to share information in multimedia formats across all Ads products, as well as to listen and respond to your comments.

 - Danial Klimkin, Ads Developer Relations Team.