Best practice for joining AdWords API placement data with AdWords ValueTrack placement data? - api

Question

We've been working successfully with the AdWords API (Version: 201708 -
Google Ads Python Client Library) for a good while building internal reports for our application. Until, that is, we hit placements…
I define placements as anywhere an AdWords ad is shown. The placement might be a domain, page, ad unit, app you name it! Placements are a very broad definition.
For our app to work for placements we need to join API spend data with activity on our website.
To do this we are running AdWords API reports and then collecting session data using AdWords ValueTrack parameters.
The ValueTrack parameters are easy enough, as there seems to be only 1 option: {placement}.
However, it's on the API where things get interesting, the API has numerous options for getting placement data. For example:
https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/reference/v201708/AdGroupCriterionService.MobileApplication
https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports/url-performance-report
https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports/placement-performance-report#criteria
https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports/automatic-placements-performance-report#domain
https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/reference/v201708/AdGroupCriterionService
After spending some time going back and forth on the various options, and burning lots of dev time, we've come to the conclusion that there must be some best practice advice out there for joining placement data from the API and ValueTrack. One that works for all types of placements, including:
Websites
Apps
AdSense
Blogspot
AMP
An example of where we are running into a matching problem is "10060.android.com.nytimes.android.adsenseformobileapps.com"... this is a placement we see coming in from ValueTrack but has no match in any of our spend reports. (In fact there are many many adsenseformobileapps.com traffic sources for which there are no spend items).
Also seeing strings like "mobileapp::2-com.mobilesrepublic.appy". These show up on our spend side but only appear in our ValueTrack around 10% of the time. Some match. The vast majority don't.
A definitive workflow on this would be SO useful for ourselves and no doubt other users…
Thanks!

Answer 1

According to https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/guides/valuetrack-mapping
the incoming ValueTrack placement should map to the following report fields:
PlacementPerformanceReport.Criteria
CriteriaPerformanceReport.Criteria
AutomaticPlacementsPerformanceReport.DisplayName
In addition to this I have also found this report useful:
UrlPlacementPerformanceReport.Domain and .Url
But I have found it is not so clear in practice. For one thing each of these reports return a slightly different subset of results..and none of these subsets exactly match the ValueTrack data set.
Here are the exceptions I have found:
subdomains
ValueTrack placements have urls with www on them... some of the time. None of the other reports do, so you will either have to strip www from ValueTrack or add www to your report data in order to match them. But be careful, other subdomains are preserved (like edition.cnn.com) and not all urls have a subdomain, so you can't just strip all the subdomains from Valuetrack and you can't just add www to all the urls in the reports. What I have found actually matches the best is the url field from the UrlPlacementPerformanceReport... but for this field you just need to strip everything after the / to get a best case matching subset. To use the other reports you would need to strip all the subdomain information from ValueTrack and sum the totals from those records. This means you would lose potentially useful data such as differences between espn.com, scores.espn.com, insider.espn.com and games.espn.com. Using the UrlPlacementPerformanceReport.url is the only way to preserve that info.
mobileapp::
ValueTrack reports on mobileapp:: placements. Many of the reports return these values too but I have found that each report just gives a subset of the whole. In particular the CriteriaPerformanceReport.Criteria report gives you many mobileapp:: values that none of the other reports do, but the other reports give you at least a few values that the CriteriaPerformanceReport doesn't. To be complete you would have to take a Union of the mobileapps: returned by the criteria performance report and another report such as the UrlPlacementPerformanceReport.url.
anonymous.google
ValueTrack provides sudomains to anonymous.google that look like a8122ac7e5da8e49.anonymous.google. If you want to match this information to your spend the only report that has this detail is UrlPlacementPerformanceReport.url.
adsenseformobileapps.com
ValueTrack provides detailed domains such as 1.iphone.com.localtvllc.fox2.adsenseformobileapps.com. None of the adwords reports can match this. The best you can get is a single summation record for the entire adsenseformobileapps.com group.