Getting Started Guide: AdGroupService Overview

About Ad Groups

An ad group is a collection of related ads and keywords and is associated with a campaign. Values set at the ad group level override corresponding values set at, and inherited from, the campaign level.

Ad Group Management

AdGroupService provides operations for creating, updating, moving, deleting, reviewing, and checking the status of ad groups.

Create Ad Groups

To create a new ad group, use the addAdGroup and addAdGroups operations. The first operation creates one ad group; the second operation creates one or more ad groups.

Note: You MUST specify the Sponsored Search and/or Content Match® bids when you create the ad group even if you have enabled campaign optimization. If you do not, the addAdGroup and addAdGroups operations will fail.

Update Ad Groups

To update an ad group, use the updateAdGroup and updateAdGroups operations. When the boolean parameter updateAll is set to true, the system performs a full update i.e., all elements are updated.

Move Ad Groups

To move an ad group from one campaign to another, use the moveAdGroup operation. You can move an ad group from a campaign whose status is deleted. However, if the status of the ad group itself is deleted, you cannot move the ad group.

Delete Ad Groups

To delete an ad group, use the deleteAdGroup and deleteAdGroups operations. Once you delete an ad group, you cannot un-delete it. See Deleting Objects.

Review Ad Groups

To get information for an ad group or a list of ad groups, use the getAdGroup and getAdGroups operations. To get a list of ad groups for a specific campaign, use the getAdGroupsByCampaignID operation.

To determine the number of keywords or excluded words in an ad group, use the getAdGroupKeywordCount and getAdGroupExcludedWordsCount operations.

Ad Group Status

To determine the status of an ad group, use the getStatusForAdGroup operation.

To retrieve all the ad groups with a specific status in a specific campaign, use the getAdGroupsByCampaignIDByStatus operation.

To change the status of an ad group, use the updateStatusForAdGroup and updateStatusForAdGroups operations.

Tactics and Bids

When you create an ad group, using the addAdGroup and addAdGroups operations, you must enable atleast one of the search tactics, either Sponsored Search or Content Match®. If you do not enable at least one of these tactics, then both tactics are enabled by default. See Setting Tactics.

For each search tactic that is enabled, you MUST specify the corresponding bid. See Setting Bids. If you do not, the addAdGroup and addAdGroups operations will fail.

To set or review the maximum bid for Sponsored Search, use the setAdGroupSponsoredSearchMaxBid and getAdGroupSponsoredSearchMaxBid operations. To set or review the maximum bid for the Content Match, use the setContentMatchMaxBid and getContentMatchMaxBid operations. The bids you set at the ad group level will apply to all of the ads and keywords in the ad group.

To review the minimum bid for Sponsored Search use the getSponsoredSearchMinBidForAdGroup and getSponsoredSearchMinBidForAdGroups operations.

To split an ad group into multiple (one for each tactic type) ad groups, use the splitAdGroupBasedOnTactic operation. You can split the ad group only if:

• The ad group is a multi-tactic ad group.
• The cap limit of the campaign is not exceeded.

When you split your ad group into separate tactic ad groups, the system creates two copies of the current ad group so that you can use one for Sponsored Search (SS) and the other for Content Match (CM). When these ad groups are created, they function like two new ad groups but contain the same ads as the original ad group. After the split, the new ad group names will contain the tactic type (SS or CM) appended so that you can identify them separately from your original ad group. Your original ad group remains in the system for historical purposes, but is automatically paused.

Ad Groups and Campaign Optimization

Campaign optimization allows you to optimize the spend of a campaign's monthly budget based on the guidelines you set at the campaign, ad group, and keyword levels. See Campaign Optimization.

To set or review optimization guidelines at the ad group level, including the maximum bid limits for Content Match and Sponsored Search, use the setOptimizationGuidelinesForAdGroup and getOptimizationGuidelinesForAdGroup operations.

To review the minimum bids for Content Match and Sponsored Search use the getContentMatchMinBidForAdGroupOptimizationGuidelines and getSponsoredSearchMinBidForAdGroupOptimizationGuidelines operations.

Once campaign optimization is enabled, you will not be able to perform certain ad group operations.See Restricted Actions.

Note: When you set up the ad group optimization guidelines, you have the option to set bid limits. However, you still MUST specify either the Sponsored Search or Content Match bids, or both, when you initially create the ad group. If you do not, the addAdGroup and addAdGroups operations will fail.

Ad Group Targeting Preferences

You can define geographic and demographic targeting attributes for your ad group/campaigns. You can also specify the day of week and time of day when you want your ads to run. Use the operations in the TargetingDictionaryService and TargetingService to define your targeting preferences. To retrieve the appropriate targeting attribute IDs, types, and values before assigning them to an ad group, use the operations in the TargetingConverterService.