OAuth in Ads APIs

Authorization is an important concern when writing software that interacts with Google’s Ads APIs. We’ve recently improved our documentation and published resources documenting how to use OAuth2 with many of our Ads APIs.



OAuth2 is an authorization flow that allows you to direct a user to a specially crafted Google URL where they grant permissions to your software to make changes to their account. With an authorized access token, you can make requests to Ads APIs on the user’s behalf. Benefits include:

• Users don’t need to provide a username and password - they just log into Google.


• No CAPTCHA challenges.


• Limited scope - the user will only be prompted to grant access to a specific part of their account. For example, they could grant access to AdWords without the application being able to see their email or calendar.

OAuth2 is supported by:

• AdWords API


• DoubleClick for Advertisers Reporting API


• DoubleClick for Advertisers Trafficking API


• AdSense Host API (v4)


• AdSense Management API


• DoubleClick for Publishers API


• DoubleClick Ad Exchange Buyer REST API

The Ads API client libraries supported by Google have built-in support for OAuth2. We’ve included examples demonstrating how to use this feature in all client libraries. See your respective product and language product sites for more information on OAuth2.



We’re also hosting a Google Developers Live event covering how to use OAuth2 on August 23rd. This will be recorded if you can’t make it. If you have any questions about OAuth2, please post on the respective product API forums.

 - Kevin Winter, AdWords API Team

Announcing v201206 of the DFP API

Today we’ve released the newest version of the DFP API, v201206, which adds a significant number of reporting improvements. The new release also fully supports OAuth 2.0 as the authentication mechanism of choice and we encourage you to switch to OAuth 2.0 from ClientLogin or OAuth 1.0a. A full list of improvements from today’s release can be found on our release notes page.

Reporting improvements



In a few of our recent hangouts, we received the feedback that while our reports were great for generating important performance metrics, the CSV files that you downloaded were not always easily machine readable. To make it easier for you to consume reports, we’ve created a new ExportFormat - CSV_DUMP. Below is a list of the features of this new format:

• Columns are now shown as Dimension.ENUM_VALUE or Column.ENUM_VALUE


• All money values are now displayed in micro format in the currency of the network


• All dates are now displayed as YYYY-MM-DD


• All date-times are now displayed as YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss±hh:mm


• There is no "pretty printing" of values (i.e. commas) and there is no total row

You may also notice that the v201204 CSV export format has been replaced by CSV_EXCEL, which can be imported into Excel-like products.

As an important note to some of our developers, after upgrading to v201206, you will most likely need to update your code; many column names have changed to reflect a more accurate description of what metrics they are indeed pulling. For example, the column TOTAL_IMPRESSIONS has been changed to TOTAL_INVENTORY_LEVEL_IMPRESSIONS because the v201204 column could only be used with dimensions like AD_UNIT_NAME on the inventory level, i.e. it could not be used with line items, orders, companies or creatives. Alternatively, TOTAL_LINE_ITEM_LEVEL_IMPRESSIONS in v201206 should now be used with dimensions like LINE_ITEM_NAME and ORDER_NAME for instances where you need to include dynamic allocation impressions from AdSense or Ad Exchange line items. To determine how each column should be updated, visit the old column’s reference page and look for the phrase that begins with “Replaced with …”, e.g.



    Replaced with TOTAL_INVENTORY_LEVEL_IMPRESSIONS beginning in v201206.

Lastly, we’ve improved formatting for inventory reports that don’t use top level ad unit views. Most importantly, the duplicate columns clicks and impressions issue for hierarchical views has been fixed and the flat view report will now match how the report is downloaded from the UI.



OAuth 2.0



If you are an eagle-eyed developer, you may have noticed that we recently added OAuth 2.0 information to our authentication page. OAuth 2.0 is now fully supported in the DFP API and we are progressively adding support in our client libraries; Java, Python, .Net , and Ruby currently have full support, while PHP will very soon. In fact, our DFP test playground already uses OAuth 2.0 with the Java library. Please stay tuned to the project sites or the forum for announcements regarding future support.



Our next hangout is July 18th and we’ll be taking your report questions or anything else you might have on your mind. As always, let us know if you have any questions on our forum.

 - Adam Rogal, DFP API Team