Creatives

Page Summary

• The creatives resource is used to manage creatives in Real-time Bidding, allowing you to submit, view the status of, and update creatives.

• Creatives must be reviewed to ensure compliance with Google policies and publisher controls before they can serve.

• The creative life cycle involves creation, review, activation, modification, and deactivation.

• Creatives are reviewed in about 30 minutes and must be approved to be used in bids.

In Real-time Bidding, bidders compete in an auction to place creatives for a given impression. You can use the creatives resource to manage your creatives. Here are some ways you can use the creatives resource:

• Submit new creatives for review.
• View the status of existing creatives.
• Update existing creatives.
• Add deals or packages to submit creatives for publisher review.

Creatives from Authorized Buyers must be reviewed to ensure they do the following before they can serve:

• Follow Google's policies
• Align with publisher protections and controls

You can also review the status of creatives for associated buyer accounts through a Google Cloud Pub/Sub subscription.

Here are the steps in the life cycle of a creative:

1. Creation: You can use buyers.creatives.create to submit a creative for review.

   Note: You can only call buyers.creatives.create once per creative. To update an existing creative, use buyers.creatives.patch.

2. Review: Creatives must be reviewed before they can serve. The review process takes about 30 minutes and verifies that the creative complies with Google's policies. For more information, see Policy compliance.

   Caution: Bids placed with unreviewed creatives are filtered from the auction.

   If you've configured your account to watch for creative status changes, a message is logged to a corresponding Google Cloud Pub/Sub subscription for every creative status change.

   Google policy review is a separate step from publisher review. Publisher review is only required for creatives you intend to place on the app or site of a publisher who has enabled creative review. Publishers can approve your creatives for use in deals or Marketplace packages. If a publisher of a deal or package requires this additional review, submit the creative using the buyers.creatives.addDeals method. For more information, see Add deals to creatives for publisher review.

3. Activation: Creatives are active immediately after approval. Active creatives can be placed in bid responses. Bids placed with disapproved creatives are filtered from the auction.

4. Modification: After review, you can use buyers.creatives.patch, to update an existing creative. This automatically resubmits the creative for review.

5. Deactivation: Creatives become inactive after being unused for 15 days. Inactive creatives aren't returned by the API. You can reactivate a creative by placing a bid with it.