The AdSense Management API has calls to generate new and saved reports. They can contain simple analytics like earnings per day or very complex tables of click-through rates per custom channel per country. This guide presents a list of edge cases that should be correctly handled for a robust integration with the APIs.
Report structure
Report results are returned as a ReportResult object. See
the report
response reference for full detials.
Using chronological dimensions: DATE, WEEK, and MONTH
Reports can be empty or have gaps
If there was no activity during the time period specified in the request, no ad requests are generated and the report service won't show rows for those time periods. This is important if you are, for example, plotting a graph.
Check out the Filling in Dates guide for more information.
Requesting MONTH and WEEK dimensions in the same report
This report can have negative or unexpected consequences. If a week belongs to two different months, it will show two rows for the same week, one for each month.
Example
| Dimensions | Metrics | Start date | End date |
|---|---|---|---|
WEEKMONTH |
CLICKS | 2014-04-28 | 2014-05-03 |
Returns:
MONTH | WEEK* | CLICKS |
|---|---|---|
| 2014-04 | 2014-04-27 | 50 |
| 2014-05 | 2014-04-27 | 43 |
* first day of the week
Solution
Remove MONTH from the report.
WEEK | CLICKS |
|---|---|
| 2014-04-27 | 93 |
Collating dimension values
When requesting dimensions like the ones related to, for example, platforms (desktop, high-end mobile devices, etc.), only the platforms with activity will be shown. If a given day, week, or month has no visits from high-end mobile devices, it will have no information for that category.
Example
| Dimensions | Metrics | Start date | End date |
|---|---|---|---|
PLATFORM_TYPE_NAMEMONTH |
AD_REQUESTS |
2014-02-01 | 2014-03-31 |
Returns:
| MONTH | PLATFORM_TYPE_NAME | AD_REQUESTS |
|---|---|---|
| 2014-03 | Desktop | 100 |
| 2014-03 | High-end mobile devices | 5 |
| 2014-04 | Desktop | 75 |
Solution
When processing the report results, assume a value of zero for any dimension values that do not appear in the results:
| MONTH | PLATFORM_TYPE_NAME | AD_REQUESTS |
|---|---|---|
| 2014-03 | Desktop | 100 |
| 2014-03 | High-end mobile devices | 5 |
| 2014-04 | Desktop | 75 |
| 2014-04 | High-end mobile devices | 0 |
Combining multiple contiguous reports
Sometimes a report is too large to be generated all at once and it has to be batched. If your app does this, consider these cases:
- If you're using
WEEKorMONTHdimensions and you're splitting the report in the middle of a week or month, each report will have duplicated entries with different data. - Make sure all the reports have the same metrics and dimensions, as data might not be combinable using different dimensions.
Special accounts
Some of your users might have AdSense accounts with attributes that you don't expect or know about. Make sure to take into account:
- Publishers with thousands of domains or sites
- Publishers with thousands of ad units or custom channels
- Publishers that would like to report on multiple ad clients (AdSense for Search, AdSense for Video, etc.)
Multiple accounts
Users can have access to more than one AdSense account. An account ID has to
be specified for every call to the API for this reason. A call to
accounts.list fetches a list of accounts and an account chooser
dialog should be displayed to the user. It can be bypassed if the number of
fetched accounts is one.
Time zone changes
AdSense Publishers can change their timezone at any time and this can produce spikes or dips in the reports. Read the guide about Local Time Zone Reporting for more information.