one adCenter Ad can exist in different adgroups?

Question

Hi, I heard that one adCenter Ad can exist in different adGroups, is it true? if so, how could this happen? I tried to create two ads with exact same title/desc/etc. but I got different adIds.

Because I am using AdCenter API do download objects as a parent-child relationship, if same adId can appear under different adgroups, then I must deal with it in a special way. So I hope to confirm if this will happen and in what scenario this would happen.

Answer 1

An ad can exist only in one AdGroup. As you correctly pointed event though you added ad with same content into two AdGroups you get two different IDs. So for AdCenter these are two separate ads although with same content.

Hope this helps,
Galin

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Galin Iliev [MCSD.NET, MCPD], http://www.galcho.com

Answer 2

Hi,

The issue is that AdIds are not guaranteed to be unique outside of an AdGroup, only within an AdGroup.  So while seemingly unlikely, it is possible that two different Ads within your campaign could randomly end up with the same AdId.  The AdId is a compound key with its parent AdGroup as I understand it.  We have had to face this same issue, and it is true for Yahoo and Google as well.  Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Do you have any proof of your theory, yanefski? If I read your reply correctly, are you implying that sometimes duplicate ads will have the same ad id, and sometimes duplicate ads will have different ad ids? I have not started downloading the ad copies from MSN yet, but I can verify that the same ad in Google distributed amongst multiple adgroups will have a unique ad id for each ad. For example, in Google, I just did a count on one of our specific ads that we have in 77 different adgroups, and there are 77 unique ad ids.


Now, if you are talking keywords in Google, that is a different story. In Google, you need the adgroup id and the keyword id to pinpoint a specific keyword. In MSN and Yahoo, each keyword in each adgroup has a unique keyword id. In Yahoo, if you delete a keyword in an adgroup and re-add that keyword, even a new keyword id would be created.

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Answer 4

Hi dshevnock,

I don't think I was clear in my initial response.  All I am trying to say is that in AdCenter, the AdId is *not* guaranteed to be unique to the account.  A single AdId could randomly be used for another Ad in another AdGroup within a single account.  Note is has nothing to do with the fact that ad text/copy is exactly the same.  It seems highly unlikely that you would ever encounter a duplicate AdId within an Account, but it is possible.  AdId is only guaranteed unique within the parent AdGroup.  The proof I have is in the API.  If the AdId in itself were unique to an account, the AdGroupId would *not* be a required parameter for the GetAdsByIdsRequest. 

From the MSDN docs:

<xs:element name="GetAdsByIdsRequest">
    <xs:complexType>
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="AdGroupId" type="xs:int"/>
            <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="AdIds" nillable="true" type="q15:ArrayOfint" xmlns:q15="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

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This is true also for Google.  From their API.

getAd : Return information about one Ad.

Parameter name  - Parameter type  - Parameter description
     adGroupId long : The ID of the AdGroup owning the Ad 
     adId long : The ID of the Ad

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I was SURE it was true for Yahoo as well, but it isn't!  In their API, only an AdId is required for GetAds[], so it would need to be unique within the scope of the account.

getAds : Return one or more ads (specified by the list of adIDs).

Parameter - Data Type - Description 

     adIDs long[] :  A list of ad IDs.


Hope that helps clarify my statement.

Thanks,

John

Answer 5

John:

When you say that, "It seems highly unlikely that you would ever encounter a duplicate AdId within an Account, but it is possible," has this been verified and not just assumed based on documentation for the operation of a service? Just because we may also need to pass the adgroup id as a parameter to a service operation does not necessarily mean that an ad's unique identifier is the combination of the adgroup id and the ad id. Maybe the adgroup id needs to be passed to simplify some operations on the API end (SQL queries, validation, etc.).

The only reason I contradict your assumptions is because this could be very misleading to programmer working with the API.

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Answer 6

dshevnock,

It is documented explicitly in the Google API.

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http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/docs/developer/adwords_api_services.html

A Word On IDs

Campaign, AdGroup, Criterion, and Ad objects all have IDs that are set by the AdWords API web services. Criterion and Ad IDs are unique only within their ad group, while AdGroup and Campaign IDs are globally unique.

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Based on this Google fact, and the required AdGroupId in the GetAds methods on AdCenter, I have to assume that AdId is likewise only unique within the AdGroup for AdCenter as well.  I will look for some MSDN documentation stating this explicitly but am not as confident I will find it.  However, erring on the side of an assumption that it *is* globally unique could have ill effects, where erring on the side that is only unique within the AdGroup would not (excepting for the programming overhead).  

I'll see if I can dig up more.

Thanks,

John
 

Answer 7

John:

Great information! I realized very early on that criterion ids (in Google) were not unique by themselves but completely missed the boat on the ad ids being unique only to the adgroup to which they belong. This makes me wonder though why ad ids would be duplicated or recycled.

You do make a very strong point about erring on the side of caution and using a combination of the ad id and the adgroup id to uniquely identify an ad. I searched the v5.1 and v6 docs to support my assumptions but could not find any such wording that supports your claim or mine.

I hope you didn't take my replies as a bash or a personal attack.

Dan

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Answer 8

Dan,

Not at all!  Good questions and discussion all around in my opinion.  In having to support my initial claim I actually proved myself incorrect on my assumption about Yahoo having this same issue- so we have both learned from this thread.  Thanks for your time and energy on this and hopefully this discussion proves useful to the ad center community.

John