IDs

Most Google Ads entities expose a getId() method that returns their identifier. While not strictly necessary in most cases, IDs may come in handy when

Working with Reports

IDs provide for a good way to link a report row to the actual Google Ads entity.

Maintaining a mapping with an external data store

You may already have ID-based information stored in your own database.

Looking for a bit of a performance boost

Fetching by IDs is often quicker than alternatives. The code for fetching a single entity is a bit easier too:

var campaigns = AdsApp.campaigns()
    .withIds([678678])
    .get();
// vs.
var campaigns = AdsApp.campaigns()
    .withCondition("Name='My Campaign'")
    .get();

Uniqueness

Campaign IDs and ad group IDs are unique: no two campaigns or ad groups will ever share the same ID. Ads and keywords, however, have composite IDs: a unique identifier of a keyword is a combination of its ad group ID and keyword ID. Likewise, a unique identifier of an ad is a combination of its ad group ID and ad ID. This has implications for the way selector.withIds() is called.

For campaigns and ad groups, selector.withIds() expects an array of numbers:

var ids = [123123, 234234, 345345];
var campaignSelector = AdsApp.campaigns().withIds(ids);

For ads and keywords, however, selector.withIds() needs an array of two-element arrays, the first element being the ad group ID. The following snippet retrieves three keywords from an ad group:

var adGroupId = 123123;
var keywordSelector = AdsApp.keywords().withIds([
    [adGroupId, 234234],
    [adGroupId, 345345],
    [adGroupId, 456456]
]);

Same construct applies when fetching ads.