Tag Archives: PMax

Upcoming Performance Max campaign migration to enable brand guidelines

Starting on May 1, 2025, we will begin to automatically enable brand guidelines for Performance Max campaigns that use the same brand assets (BUSINESS_NAME, LOGO, and LANDSCAPE_LOGO) across all asset groups.

Please note the rollout timelines:
  • For Google Ads UI users: The process will begin on May 1, 2025 for customer IDs that exclusively manage their campaigns using the UI.
  • For API users: This process will begin on June 1, 2025.
The overall process across all campaigns is expected to be complete by July 31, 2025.

Important Notes:
  • Only campaigns using consistent business names and logo assets across all asset groups will be automatically migrated. Campaigns with variations in these assets will not be migrated.
  • All eligible Performance Max campaigns under a customer ID will be migrated simultaneously.
  • After migration, each migrated campaign will have its own set of brand assets stored at the campaign level using CampaignAsset.
  • You can tell if a campaign has been migrated by checking its Campaign.brand_guidelines_enabled field.
Actions Required
If your application creates asset groups, update your code to check the campaign’s Campaign.brand_guidelines_enabled field. This will tell you whether to include brand assets in the new asset group.

If your application modifies brand assets, update your code to check the campaign’s Campaign.brand_guidelines_enabled field. This will tell you where to save the brand asset; either on a campaign using a CampaignAsset or on an asset group using an AssetGroupAsset.

To avoid extra steps later, we strongly recommend migrating all of your campaigns now using CampaignService.EnablePMaxBrandGuidelines. If you migrate your campaigns manually, each CampaignService.EnablePMaxBrandGuidelines request can only include 10 EnableOperations.

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

Upcoming changes to enable brand guidelines in Performance Max

Starting on January 20, 2025, new Performance Max (PMax) campaigns created with the UI will have brand guidelines enabled and require business name and logo brand assets to be linked at the campaign level rather than the asset group level. Brand guidelines is a new feature that allows you to control how your brand is represented in your Performance Max campaign automated assets or formats.

What this means for API users

New PMax campaigns created in the UI with brand guidelines enabled will automatically link BUSINESS_NAME, LOGO, and LANDSCAPE_LOGO via the CampaignAsset resource rather than by using the AssetGroupAsset resource, which may impact integrations that attempt to report on or update these assets. You can check if brand guidelines are enabled for a PMax campaign by referencing the Campaign.brand_guidelines_enabled field.

As of v18 of the Google Ads API, it is not possible to create brand guidelines-enabled PMax campaigns via the API, which means new campaigns must link BUSINESS_NAME, LOGO, and LANDSCAPE_LOGO assets using the AssetGroupAsset resource. In a future release, you will be able to create and fully manage PMax campaigns with brand guidelines enabled.

It is important to note that the same asset requirements will continue to apply to all PMax campaigns regardless of whether or not brand guidelines are enabled. However, BUSINESS_NAME, LOGO, and LANDSCAPE_LOGO asset requirements will be evaluated at the campaign level for campaigns with brand guidelines enabled and the asset group level for campaigns without brand guidelines enabled. You can reference the relevant section of our Performance Max optimization and troubleshooting guide for more information, and as always, contact our team if you need support.

- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Introducing the Performance Max Developer Guide

Today we are pleased to announce the release of a dedicated Performance Max developer guide. With this release, we’ve moved Performance Max content to its own tab in the main navigation of our developer documentation with a dedicated landing page and updated navigation to help you more easily find the information you need to build Performance Max integrations.

Other notable improvements include:

Improving Performance Max integrations Blog Series

This article is part of a series that discusses new and upcoming features that you have been asking for. Keep an eye out for further updates and improvements on our developer blog, continue providing feedback on Performance Max integrations with the Google Ads API, and as always, contact our team if you need support.

- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Performance Max Guide Enhancements

Today, we are pleased to announce several guide enhancements to improve the experience of creating, managing and reporting on Performance Max campaigns with the Google Ads API.

Improving Performance Max integrations Blog Series

This article is part of a series that discusses new and upcoming features that you have been asking for. Keep an eye out for further updates and improvements on our developer blog, continue providing feedback on Performance Max integrations with the Google Ads API, and as always, contact our team if you need support.

- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Change to updates of Google Ads custom audience types

Starting September 27, 2023 you will see a change if you use custom audiences. You will no longer be able to update a custom audience type once you create the custom audience. For example, if you set the type to AUTO or INTEREST, then you cannot update it to the type SEARCH in the Google Ads API. This change ensures that your campaign continues to serve by making sure that your custom audience remains eligible.

What do I need to change?

Modify your code so it avoids attempting to update the type of an existing CustomAudience. If your code attempts to update the type field after September 27, 2023 then the API will return a CustomAudienceError.INVALID_TYPE_CHANGE error.

Where can I get support?

If you have questions, please reach out to us on the forum or at [email protected].

Nadine Wang, Google Ads API Team

Changes to location targeting in Google Ads Search, Shopping, Display, and Performance Max campaigns

Starting on April 14, 2023, there will be changes made to the location targeting settings for Search, Shopping, Display, and Performance Max campaigns in the Google Ads API. We are making this change to simplify the location targeting portfolio and improve advertiser performance. All versions will throw errors if you try to set the location target settings to one of the values shown below.

Campaign.geo_target_type_setting fields
positive_geo_target_type can no longer be set to SEARCH_INTEREST for Search, Shopping, and Display campaigns. The default value is PRESENCE_OR_INTEREST.
negative_geo_target_type can no longer be set to PRESENCE_OR_INTEREST for Performance Max, Search, Shopping, and Display campaigns. The default value is PRESENCE.
The error returned if these values are used is SettingError.SETTING_VALUE_NOT_COMPATIBLE_WITH_CAMPAIGN.

On April 24, 2023, we will start performing any necessary auto-migration of fields to the new default values until no more invalid combinations exist. The auto-migration will occur on a per-campaign basis. You can confirm that the migration is complete for a Google Ads account by checking that these two queries return zero rows.


SELECT campaign.id, campaign.geo_target_type_setting.positive_geo_target_type, campaign.advertising_channel_type FROM campaign WHERE campaign.advertising_channel_type IN ('DISPLAY', 'SEARCH', 'SHOPPING') AND campaign.geo_target_type_setting.positive_geo_target_type = 'SEARCH_INTEREST' LIMIT 1
SELECT campaign.id, campaign.advertising_channel_type, campaign.geo_target_type_setting.negative_geo_target_type FROM campaign WHERE campaign.geo_target_type_setting.negative_geo_target_type = 'PRESENCE_OR_INTEREST' AND campaign.advertising_channel_type IN ('DISPLAY', 'PERFORMANCE_MAX', 'SEARCH', 'SHOPPING') LIMIT 1
Where can I get support?
If you have questions, please reach out to us on the forum or at [email protected].
Nadine Wang, Google Ads API Team

Google Ads API Video Roundup – Feb 2023

The Google Ads Developers Channel is your source for release notes, best practices, new feature integrations, code walkthroughs, and video tutorials. Check out some of the recently released and popular videos and playlists below, and remember to subscribe to our channel to stay up to date with the latest video content.

Performance Max for Developers [New Series]

In this series, we navigate the entire developer journey of creating standard Performance Max campaigns and Performance Max campaigns for online sales with a product feed. We discuss how to think about Performance Max as compared with other campaign types and walk through the process of creating Performance Max campaigns conceptually. In addition, we explore several implementation options with the use of the new Performance Max Interactive Guide, which you can use to easily follow along and jumpstart your integration.

Five episodes have been published with an additional three more on the way. Subscribe to our channel to be notified when new episodes are released.

Testing Your Integration [New Series]

In the first two episodes of this miniseries, we begin to look at testing with the Google Ads API. In the introductory episode, we discuss Google Ads test accounts and test account alternatives. In the second episode, we demonstrate test account usage in practice. Subscribe to our channel to be notified when the next episode about testing best practices becomes available.

Campaign Primary Status [New Video]

The Google Ads API introduced two new fields on the campaign resource in v12, called primary_status and primary_status_reason. In this video, we discuss how they can help you understand what is going on with your campaigns and how to optimize their serving.

Meet the Team [New Episodes]

Check out the two new episodes in our Meet the Team series to catch in-depth discussions with Eric Schwelm, who is a Software Engineer and Tech Lead on the Google Ads API, and Carolyn Chou, who is a Product Manager working on Performance Max campaigns in the Google Ads API.


For additional topics, including Release Notes, Authentication and Authorization and Working with REST, check out the Google Ads Developers YouTube channel.

As always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions via the Google Ads API forum or at [email protected].

- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team

Google Ads API Video Roundup

The Google Ads Developers Channel is your video source for release notes, best practices, new feature integrations, code walkthroughs, and video tutorials. Check out some of the recently released and popular videos and playlists below, and remember to subscribe to our channel to stay up to date with the latest video content.

Google Ads API Best Practices - Error Handling and Debugging
In this episode of the Google Ads API Best Practices Series, we discuss how to handle errors that may occur when interacting with the Google Ads API, along with tools that may help you debug your applications, such as logging and the REST interface.
Meet the Team with David Wihl
In this video, David Wihl shares a bit about his role as a Developer Relations Engineer at Google and discusses his work in supporting the Performance Max campaign API integration.

[Live Demo] Building a Google Ads API Web App
Getting started with the Google Ads API? In this 8-episode series, we take a deep dive into developing web apps with the Google Ads API, with a focus on the OAuth flow, by building a multi-tenant app entirely from scratch.

Logging & Monitoring
This miniseries covers the basics of adding logging and monitoring to your Google Ads API integration and then goes into more advanced topics, with a special focus on Cloud tooling. Google Ads Query Language (GAQL)
In this series, we cover everything you need to know about the Google Ads Query Language to make reporting requests against the Google Ads API. We begin with the basics and build in subsequent episodes to cover various nuances of GAQL. We even dive into the various tools available to help you structure your queries. This playlist will equip you with the information you need to know to become a GAQL power user. For additional topics, including Authentication and Authorization and Working with REST, check out the Google Ads API Developer Series.

As always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions via the Google Ads API forum or at [email protected].
- Devin Chasanoff, on behalf of the Google Ads API Team