This guide provides a high-level overview of the major steps to complete a migration of an existing AdWords API app to Google Ads API.
Make your first call
As mentioned in the Carryover concepts, the credentials that were previously used with the AdWords API are equally applicable to the Google Ads API. To ensure that credentials are correct, the first step is to try to make your first API call.
Learn the API and try the samples
Using your preferred client library, become familiar
with the variety of sample code. Be sure to try both search and mutate
examples in order to learn the different approaches between the Google Ads API and
the AdWords API. While the concepts are the same, the call formats are
significantly different.
The objective at this point to become familiar enough with the new call formats in order to determine the work required to migrate your specific app.
Plan your migration
The Google Ads API and the AdWords API have been tested for concurrent usage within the same app. This lets you migrate your app incrementally rather than all at once.
For migration planning, there are two categories of tasks: overall migration components and per-service components.
Overall migration components include:
- Overhead of running both APIs simultaneously
- Migrating reports
Per-service components include:
- Information retrieval: migrating queries / searches
- Information updates: migrating mutates
You can use the Google Ads API for retrieval and the legacy AdWords API code for information updates within the same app, depending on the number of updates and required level of granularity for a specific migration.
Ensure that the migration plan allocates sufficient time for testing. Use test accounts for this purpose.
Phased rollout
Once the migration plan is finalized, complete the code implementation and deployment service-by-service. This limits impact while allowing for familiarity with the new API.
By the end of this phase, all existing and new features of your app should be using the Google Ads API.
Prioritize extensions migration
Feed-based extensions are being deprecated in favor of Asset-based extensions. Feed-based extensions will sunset beginning in October 2021. We recommend that you prioritize the migration of any feeds and any code that touches these extensions.
See the relevant migration documentation and guides for more information.