Tag Archives: budgets

Upcoming change to LowerTargetRoas recommendations in the Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts

As of v17 of the Google Ads API, recommendations of type LOWER_TARGET_ROAS have included a current_average_target_micros as a whole currency value instead of a micros value (where one million is equivalent to one currency unit) as indicated by the field name. On April 23, 2025, we are rolling out a fix to populate current_average_target_micros with the micros value.

Note that as a result of the incorrect unit, the currently returned current_average_target_micros value is truncated and is therefore less precise than the micros equivalent. If you were converting the existing value to micros by multiplying by 1,000,000, the resulting value wouldn't necessarily be correct because any digits past the first position are dropped. For example, a current_average_target_micros value of 5 might have been converted to 5,000,000 in micros before the change, but could be returned as 5,750,000 (more precise) after the change.

What do I need to do?

If you use the Google Ads API or Google Ads scripts to query the recommendation resource for recommendations of type LOWER_TARGET_ROAS, and your application logic uses the current_average_target_micros field, you must update your application to treat the value as micros instead of a whole budget value for when the change takes effect on April 23, 2025.

If you have any questions or need help, check out the Google Ads API support page for options.

 - Laura Chevalier, Google Ads API Team

Announcing Budget Prefills with the Google Ads API

With v18 of the Google Ads API, you can now use the Recommendations.GenerateRecommendations method during campaign construction to retrieve optimized budget suggestions for Performance Max and Search campaigns.

When using the GenerateRecommendations method with a recommendation type of CAMPAIGN_BUDGET, you can supply inputs, such as final URL and bidding strategy, which Google machine learning models will use to generate budget recommendations. Google Ads API users that provide a campaign creation interface can provide budget prefills that fit into the campaign creation workflow. As with many recommendation types, campaign budget recommendations provide projected impact metrics to help understand the effect that implementing the recommendation will have on account performance.

Explore additional Recommendations API features

Recommendations in the Google Ads API offer several ways to increase your campaigns' performance through customized suggestions like adding new keywords or updating your bidding strategy. With RecommendationSubscriptionService, you can subscribe to automatically apply specific recommendation types of your choosing for your account. To retrieve and process recommendations directly, you can leverage the recommendation reporting resource.

To explore the full recommendations offering, check out our implementation guide.

 - Laura Chevalier, Google Ads API Team

Shared budget for Smart Shopping Campaigns

Starting February 15, 2022, all existing and future Smart Shopping Campaigns (SSC) will use a shared budget type. Although shared, the assigned budget will only be used by the SSC and will behave like a standard, non-shared campaign budget. New campaigns cannot be added to the shared budget. This change will not have any impact on campaign performance. In reports and queries, existing and future SSC budgets will be returned as explicitly_shared = true (isExplicitlyShared in AdWords API).

Note: the AdWords API will sunset on April 27, 2022. Developers must migrate to the Google Ads API before then.

If you have any questions or need additional help, contact us via the forum.
, Google Ads API Team