Moderator: Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink
Jon Diorio, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Google AdWords, Google Inc. was first up.
The AdWords API allows: - Account management - Campaign management - Reporting - Traffic estimation
The API helps manage more accounts and campaigns faster and more accurately.
Sample USes: - Automate the regular generation and retrieval of reports - Automate cumbersome bid management - Automate complex inventory management - And more
Resources Include: - Developer's Guide (<-- most fundamental) - Developers Sandbox - AdWords API Blog (<-- most important) - API Email Notifications - API Developer Forum - FAQs - Sample Code - SOAP Toolkits
There are 9 different services: - Campaign Service - AdGroup Service - Criterion Service - Ad Service - Traffic Estimator - Reporting - and more...
AdWords API Versioning: - They no longer break things - Goal is to reach a feature parity with the front end - Older versions are maintained for four months - Version "Diff" information is available in release notes
Usage, Units & Billing - AdWords API utlizes a unit based system - Each ooerating performed on an AdWords account consumes a certain number of API units - While some types of operations may consume a single unit, others may consume more - On a regular basis, each developer will be billed $0.25 per thousand API units
www.google.com/apis/adwords
Dan Boberg, Managing Director, Sales Technology, Yahoo! Yahoo Developer Network gives you: - REST web services - Desktop based environments - RSS feeds - Presentation libraries - Developer centers - Applications gallery - Open Hack day
API Programs: - Advertisers Program (YSM marketplace) - Developer Program (open access and online support) - Commercial Program (enterprise class support)
There is a new API commercial program - Open to All - No fees for API access - Open and transparent - Commercial grade technical and marketing support - Massively scalability production platform - There are fee based services for SLAs
Goals: - Building partnerships
Commercial Program Addresses Specific Needs: - Reliability - Scalability - Support with SLAs
Q4 time frame for application directory and they also want to add certification for certain applications.
David Flesh, Senior Director, Product Management, SEMDirector
Which Engines Have APIs - Ask - Business.com - Baidu - Gogole - MSN - Ingenio - Lycos - Yahoo - Miva - Mirago - Mamma - Kanoodle - LookSmart - Local.com - Simpli.com - SortPrice - etc.
Challenges - Not a standard around developing those APIs - No common data schema standards across search engines - Organic API data is either non existent or offers little value - Occasional inconsistencies between cost data reported through the API and what is actually billed - Changes to metrics that are reported are not called out in the API, therefore it becomes necessary to implement checksums to make sure historical values are consistent from week to week - Quota for large clients - Lack of special character support from some APIs strip out meaningful data - Deleted campaigns are not always noted matching performance metrics with account structures is difficult
Documentation and Support: - Great job of documenting things online - Inquires to reps are ignored, passed off, or responses are refer to documents - Personal support is offered
Improvements: - Panama - Google asking for feedback on APIs - Missed Opportunity metrics reported by Google - Noticeable improvements in MSN support efforts
Roadmap Requests: - Organic search API - Increase quota limits - Provide percentage of clicks seen at varying average position - Provide the number of queries for a keyword - Demographic data - Improve sandbox capability
API Futures: - Standards - Common Ontology or Schema
Julienne Thompson Hood, Director of OutSearch™, Advertising.com
- Automated, reliable information exchange between campaign and engine needed 24/7 - Campaigns are managed across multiple engines on a portfolio basis...
Best Practices - Develop core applications that let them translate data into their own systems - Identify most important business needs and decide which API features to take advantage of - Write application to compile and provide meaningful reports on your most important data elements, costs, bid updates, etc. - Test new features before implementing - Utilize user forums
She posted a cheat sheet on search APIs by engine, I can't type it, sorry.
Tips and Tricks: - Feature parity among engines - Yearly releases among products - Development lead team - Data visibility - API usage costs
