Adwords API Issue

[Digerati]

AdWords rolled out an update to their API yesterday which has resulted in a few major issues. Basically anybody (themselves or their bid management service) using the API to manage their bids will be affected by this problem. What happens is that when any bid was changed for a keyword using the API, that keyword’s “destination URL” would get deleted and would change to that ad groups default URL. This is happening each time a bid was changed for every keyword.

Obviously, there are big implications like loss of conversion data. This is especially bad for people using conversion data to allocate bids. And the worst thing is that there is no way (that I've found so far) to determine which keywords were affected!

Anybody else have any input on this?

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Digerati, please accept our apology for this issue, which I understand to have effected a very small number of advertisers. I'm sorry that you were one of the few.

I'm guessing that you may have seen it by now, but AdWordsAPIAdvisor posted an update on this subject today over in the AdWords API Forum on Google Groups. You'll find it here:

[groups.google.com...]

(Hmmm. Wonder where AdWordsAPIAdvisor got that cool nick?)

AWA

[Digerati]

Thanks for listening to our concerns AWA. The problem has now been rectified by our bid management provider, so all's well that ends well.

Kudos on the sophisticated nomenclature, AdWordsAPIAdvisor! ;)

[bakedjake]

Obviously, there are big implications like loss of conversion data.

There are even bigger implications - like people having targetted URLs ripped out of their account and sending the traffic to the untargetted, default URL instead. That means that some people were paying lots of money for traffic that didn't convert.

Also, I didn't hear of any advertisers being notified. I don't think I even received an email. Did anyone else get notified via phone or email?

Anyone successful in getting a credit for bad traffic?

What's the point in having an account rep if they can't even notify you when an event that affects your account occurs? One would think that if it was a very small number of advertisers, personal notification would have been in order, considering one would assume the bigger advertisers would also be using the API. I don't think my rep even remembers my name, to be honest.

AdWords needs a good loyalty program manager to beat their customer service managers and reps over the head and teach them how to treat good customers.

[Digerati]

I agree vehemently with what BakedJake pointed out above. It's ignominious on Google's part that my bid management provider not only identified the problem and alerted me but also got the situation rectified, instead of Google doing it.