Google AdWords API Sunset Coming April 2022 What It Means for Your Business

Google will sunset its long-serving AdWords API on April 27, 2022. Businesses will now reap the benefits of the tech titan’s new and improved Google Ads API—but what does this change mean for your critical advertising campaigns?  

In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of the new API, why it matters for businesses, and how Socius is handling the migration to keep your business operations running without a hitch. 

What is the Google AdWords API and what does it do? 

Google is the number one search engine used today and the most visited website in the world. Securing a coveted spot at the top of Google’s search engine results has the potential to boost a business’s visibility to drive traffic to their website, offer engagement opportunities with new potential customers, and drive business objectives forward.  

As such, it’s to a business’s advantage to pay Google to push their advertisements to the top of the search engine results, giving them a competitive advantage in online marketing efforts. Google AdWords API is the legacy application programming interface (API) that allows developers to directly interact with their account details on the Google Ads server to help businesses manage their advertising campaigns. 

A number of features are integrated into the software to help businesses fine-tune their efforts. Notably, Google AdWords API reports enable advertisers to measure the performance of individual campaigns or ad groups they’ve placed on the Google search engine page. There are also important automated scripts that enable companies to perform a variety of useful functions, such as testing the appearance of their ads to improve performance. 

What’s the change to Google AdWords? 

So what exactly does a sunset mean, and how is it different from any other new upgrade? 

Google issues a new release of its software every three to four months to enhance features and fix bugs. When it does so, the older versions of the program are deprecated, which means they can still be used and API endpoints will continue to function normally—that is, until the deprecated version is sunset.  

A sunset version cannot be used and must be migrated immediately. API endpoints will stop working and client libraries will no longer support the sunset API versions in any new client library versions after the sunset dates. Google typically sunsets a version eight to ten months after its release. 

Basically, you’re in for a lot of errors if you don’t migrate over to the new version before an old version is sunset, and you’ll lose access to critical business data about the performance of your Google Ads campaigns. 

How does the new Google Ads API work? 

The new API uses a modern programmatic interface based on a more flexible and intuitive query language that will allow advertisers to further extend and scale their reporting capabilities. It requires less coding than AdWords API, making it faster for your team to build applications and reduce the overall time to market.  

The new interface doesn’t just help your team become more productive, it also helps Google. The overall increased functionality is just the start of efforts to provide an innovative and full-featured advertising API. New releases will be rolled out frequently to add additional features and implement bug fixes. 

Why does the new Google Ads API matter to your business?   

The more intuitive, scalable language will replace previous features, like Google AdWords API reports, with a new reporting mechanism that seamlessly integrates between reports and updates. The new API also enables improved audience targeting and provides better support for Smart Bidding than its predecessor—to help keep your campaign budget on track. 

Here’s a snapshot of just some of the potentially lucrative new features and improvements: 

• Performance Max campaigns analyze your campaigns across multiple channels (Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, etc.) to put your money into your highest-performing campaigns.  
• Search Campaigns help people who are actively looking for the services that your businesses provide find you faster. 
• Display campaigns will expand your audience reach by advertising to users when they’re using Gmail, YouTube, or even browsing another website. 

• Dynamic remarketing ads will integrate business data with display campaign templates customized for your industry to promote the products or services that people view on your website. 
• Local services ads will provide direct leads via phone calls or messages to audiences in your business’s local area. 

What potential problems does the new Google Ads API create for home services businesses?   

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Google is the best of the best when it comes to what they do, but even they can’t get around the bugs and glitches that come with a new release. A new release provides them with thousands of customers to provide a level of product testing that isn’t available in-house for any software engineering team. As such, businesses may notice bugs that Google will correct in future releases. 

There may also be a learning curve for users, as many legacy offerings will be retired in favor of new enhanced features. For example, new terminology has been implemented, and there will be an adjustment period for users to be able to intuitively use old features that have been repackaged to support the new API. 

How Socius is handling the migration to the new Google Ads API 

As a business owner, it’s important to be aware of how your agency is handling the decommissioning of the Google AdWords API. What are their plans for handling the necessary migrations and potential hurdles? Have they talked to you about handling the transition? 

From our end, Socius will continue to provide our customers with Google Ads performance reports to help monitor any changes. Our developer teams have updated our endpoints to accept the correct data going forward and we’re ready to go. Therefore, our clients shouldn’t see any sort of disruption in service or reporting.