Last year, we announced upgraded location extensions, a more efficient way to manage and use business locations in ads by linking Google My Business and AdWords accounts. To help you manage your business locations more easily at scale, we’re now releasing the Google My Business API.

Google My Business will be the central repository for managing your business locations. The creation of manual location extensions as feed items through the AdWords API has been deprecated and will sunset in Q2 2016. Please update your code before March 31, 2016 to avoid being impacted by this transition.

Supported features
The first version of the Google My Business API allows you to read, create, update and delete unverified business locations. Supported attributes are name, address, contact numbers, URL, categories, and business hours. Unverified locations can be used as location extensions in AdWords, but have to be verified to be eligible to show up on Google Maps.

Future releases of the Google My Business API will support additional functionality that will allow you to fully manage your location data across Google Ads and Maps.

Getting started with the Google My Business API
If you already use the AdWords API and manage more than 50 business locations, you can apply for access to the Google My Business API. Once granted, you will have access to the Google My Business API documentation and you can follow the steps there to get started. For accounts with 50 or fewer locations, please use Google My Business Locations for now.

Linking locations to accounts, campaigns or ad groups as location extensions
Users managing multi-location businesses (chains) must have a separate Google My Business account for each chain for bulk-verification. If you already manage locations under bulk-verified accounts in Google My Business today, you can link those accounts to AdWords to have your location extensions in sync.

For developers managing AdWords accounts with a large number of locations for small and medium businesses, we recommend creating one Google My Business account as a central repository for all locations. Each physical location should be created only once. If different owners and managers are involved per location or for sets of locations, we suggest using Business Accounts.

Once the AdWords accounts are linked to your shared Google My Business account, the locations will be available as feed items in AdWords. You are responsible for creating a CustomerFeed and using an appropriate matching function to make sure only locations that actually belong to the customer are linked to their related AdWords account. You can use CampaignFeeds or AdGroupFeeds for additional filtering based on campaigns or ad groups.

The best way to filter locations from a shared Google My Business account is to create location labels through the Google My Business API and use a matching function that uses these labels for selection. For example, you can label each location with its AdWords Customer ID in Google My Business and use these Customer ID labels for filtering in AdWords. Or you can label each location with a unique ID, as long as you keep track of these IDs.

Please see our guide for managing location extensions for further details, which also includes an end-to-end code example.

Migration of existing location extensions
If you are using manual location extensions through the AdWords API, we recommend migrating your locations to Google My Business before March 31, 2016. After this date, the creation of manual location extensions will sunset. All unmigrated locations stored in AdWords will be auto-migrated to Google My Business at a later date. Further details about the timeline and process will be announced in this blog.

Timo Bozsolik, AdWords API Team

AdWords API v201502 will be sunset on November 12, 2015, after which all v201502 API requests will begin to fail. This version was deprecated on June 25, 2015. If you are still on v201502, we recommend that you migrate directly to v201509 (released last week) and skip v201506. Please be sure to migrate soon to ensure your API access is unaffected.

We have prepared various resources to help with the migration:

• v201509 migration guide
• v201506 migration guide
• Release notes

As always, if you have any questions about this migration, please contact us via the forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.

- Michael Cloonan, AdWords API Team

On Monday, November 30, 2015, in accordance with the deprecation schedule, v201408 of the DFP API will be sunset. At that time, any requests made to v201408 will return errors.

If you're still using v201408, now's the time to upgrade to the latest release and take advantage of new features like line item level reconciliation (see our guide here). To do so, check the release notes to identify any breaking changes, grab the latest version of your client library and update your code.

Some changes to look out for:

• Flash creatives have been updated to use CreativeAssets.
• Report DimensionFilters have been replaced by PQL equivalents.
• The ReportService's getReportJob has been replaced with getReportJobStatus. The new method returns only the ReportJobStatus.
• The ForecastService was given a facelift, adding support for a new kind of forecast and more granular breakdowns.
• LineItem.startDateTime and LineItem.endDateTime now require a timeZoneID. You can retrieve all of the supported time zone IDs from the Time_Zone PQL table.
• Type fields have been removed from all entities. Use class names, instance of, or xsi:type instead.

This is not an exhaustive list, so as always, don't hesitate to reach out to us with any questions. To be notified of future deprecations and sunsets, join the DFP API Deprecation Announcements group and adjust your notification settings.

 - Chris Seeley, DFP API Team

Today we’re announcing the release of AdWords API v201509. Here are the highlights:

• Improved batch processing. The new BatchJobService supports all of the same operations as MutateJobService, but offers additional features such as support for creating dependent objects using temporary IDs, better error reporting, improved performance, and a much higher limit on the number of operations per job. Check out the accompanying guide to get started.
• AdWords for video and TrueView video campaigns in reports. The AdWords API now supports TrueView campaigns that have migrated from AdWords for video, and several reports now include statistics and new metrics for these campaigns. See the release notes for the complete list of changes and additions.
• New reporting columns for multi-channel advertisers are available on multiple reports making it easier to track interactions vs. clicks.
• Customer Match. Build and target user lists from email addresses using the new CrmBasedUserList.
• Structured snippets can now be created using extension setting services.
• Conversion column changes. Conversion columns have been modified, added, or removed on multiple reports to coincide with the upcoming conversion reporting changes in AdWords. See the release notes for the complete list of changes.
• HTML5 ads can now be added as TemplateAds using template ID 419. In addition, MediaService now supports uploading media bundles for use with this new template.
• Geo targeted ad customizers. Target each ad customizer feed item to a specific geographic location.
• Gmail sponsored promotions. The AdWords API now fully supports the Gmail image, single promotion, and multi-product ad formats via template ads.
• Dynamic remarketing ads have new placeholder fields for setting upgraded URL attributes such as tracking templates, custom parameters, and final URLs.
• Active View reporting. New fields for Active View viewable impressions, measurable impressions, measurable cost, and measurability are now available in multiple reports.

If you’re using v201502 of the AdWords API, please note that it’s being sunset on November 12th, 2015. We encourage you to skip v201506 and migrate straight to v201509. If you’re using v201506, be aware it’s now marked deprecated and will be sunset on April 11th, 2016.

As with every new version of the AdWords API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the release notes and the v201509 migration guide. The updated client libraries and code examples will be published shortly. With this release, we’ve also updated the Required Minimum Functionality document to include some of the newly added features. If you have any questions or need help with migration, please post on the forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.

- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team

Smart banners are a handy thing for publishers. You can drop an AdMob smart banner into a layout or storyboard, and it’ll stretch or squeeze itself at runtime until it’s just the right size for the device, then request an ad to match. They’re a great feature with all the extra work hidden under the hood.

If you’re building an Android mediation adapter or custom event, though, things aren’t quite as simple -- after all, you’re under that hood, too! A common rough spot for developers is retrieving a smart banner’s size. Because the Google Mobile Ads SDK uses constants to internally represent a smart banner’s height and width, the getHeight and getWidth methods of a smart banner’s AdSize will return those constants (they’re negative numbers, so they’re quite hard to miss). That means relying on calls to getHeight and getWidth to determine a smart banner’s true size isn’t a workable strategy.

So how should adapter and custom event developers calculate sizes correctly? By avoiding getHeight and getWidth, and instead asking for pixel counts using getHeightInPixels and getWidthInPixels, two other methods offered by AdSize. You can scale their return values according to the device’s metrics and end up with the same kind of DPI values returned by getWidth and getHeight for other ad sizes. Here’s a code snippet that shows how it’s done:

// Get the raw pixel counts.
int widthInPixels = size.getWidthInPixels(context);
int heightInPixels = size.getHeightInPixels(context);

// These metrics include screen density, which is what we’re after.
DisplayMetrics displayMetrics = Resources.getSystem().getDisplayMetrics();

// These are values you can send to your mediated network’s SDK.
int widthInDpi = Math.round(widthInPixels / displayMetrics.density);
int heightInDpi = Math.round(heightInPixels / displayMetrics.density);

Once you finish the math, you’ll have proper DPI values that can be sent to whichever network you’re mediating. The calls to getHeightInPixels and getWidthInPixels require a valid Context, but you can use the one provided as a parameter to the requestBannerAd methods in MediationBannerAdapter and CustomEventBanner.

Now you know the best way to gauge the size of a smart banner! Use this approach and it’ll help keep your mediation running smoothly.

If you have technical questions about this (or anything else relating to the Google Mobile Ads SDK) stop by our forum.

 - Andrew Brogdon, Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Recently, we announced the availability of native ads for apps in DFP. Here, we’re going to introduce you to creating native creatives with the DFP API using the ads Java client library. A native creative consists of a set of assets (headline, image, etc.) which are sent to mobile apps for custom rendering in their own code (see our Android and iOS developer guides for details).

Native creatives are actually just another type of template-based creative. While the DFP UI abstracts this, in the API you create a native creative using a TemplateCreative with the system-defined native template ID. The creative template IDs available in your network can be retrieved by the getCreativeTemplatesByStatement method in the CreativeTemplateService. You can also view these IDs in the UI under Delivery > Creatives > Native ad formats (see the ID below each native ad format name in the table). The native app install template ID is 10004400.

    TemplateCreative nativeAppInstallCreative = new TemplateCreative();
    nativeAppInstallCreative.setCreativeTemplateId(10004400L);

Because native creatives do not have a predetermined size, you need to set a placeholder size of 1x1.

    Size size = new Size();
    size.setWidth(1);
    size.setHeight(1);
    size.setIsAspectRatio(false);
    nativeAppInstallCreative.setSize(size);

Finally, specify a name and destination URL; this example is for the Pie Noon app:

    nativeAppInstallCreative.setName("Pie Noon native ad");
    nativeAppInstallCreative.setDestinationUrl(
        "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.fpl.pie_noon");

Settings specific to native creatives are set via template variables. An app install native creative requires the following unique template variable names to be set:

• Headline
• Body
• Image
• Price
• Appicon
• Calltoaction
• Starrating
• Store
• DeeplinkclickactionURL

Note that creative template variables are case sensitive and those of type AssetCreativeTemplateVariableValue (“Image” and “Appicon”) must have a unique filename.

You can find the full Java example on how to create native creatives in our GitHub repository here. All of our other ads client libraries have similar examples.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line on the DFP API forums or the Ads Developer Google+ page.

 - Vincent Tsao, DFP API Team

Fall 2015 AdWords API Workshop registration is now open. Access the registration forms on the workshop website at www.adwordsapiworkshops.com.

Once you choose a location we'll send you an email confirming your registration.

Workshops will be held on the following dates and locations:

• New York City: October 20
• San Francisco: October 22
• London: October 27
• Hamburg: October 29
• Tokyo: October 29
• Amsterdam: November 3

These workshops are technical in nature and are ideal for API developers. We hope to see you at these events. Register today!

If you have any questions about the AdWords API Workshops, you can post them on our forum. Check out our Google+ page for AdWords API updates.

—AdWords API Team.