Adwords API cost. (more than I thought?)

api units

[Weblamer]

Greeting folks.

I recently wrote a small application in vb.net for use with the adwords API. All the program does is download all of the keywords we are currently buying and placing them into a mysql database. This way We can check against the database to see if we are currently buying a keyword, and if not then we can go ahead and add it.

We have around 5,000 keywords on adwords separated into different campaigns. Since the cost is .25 per 1000 transactions, I thought it would only cost a couple of dollars to download all these keywords. Yet only a few days later and I find myself hitting the $100 monthly budget i set up.

Am I vastly underestimating the cost of the api? Also, is there any other way to use the API to quickly check to see if you are currently bidding on a keyword or not? Downloading it into a database was the easiest way I could think of.

[peer_esv]

It's cheaper to run an account structure report. It dumps everything into one file and the cost of 1000 units does not increase when you campaigns are increasing in size.

[MadeWillis]

Have you used Adwords Editor? You can paste a keyword right in there and filter keywords in about 2 seconds to see if you already have it. Why do you need the API to do this?

[eWhisper]

There are many ways to pull the exact same data via the API.

For your desires, the structure call mentioned above is your best bet (if you only need keywords, the editor is totally free as mentioned above as well).

Going forward, if you continue to develop the API, it can be useful to look at all of the various calls to maximize how much data you can pull based upon cost.