Starting in March, DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) will be undergoing scheduled maintenance to make important updates to our systems. Every DCM account will be assigned a single maintenance window. However, these windows may be on different days for different accounts. More information about how this will affect the DCM product can be found in our help center.

How will this affect API users?

Maintenance is expected to last up to 8 hours per account. During that time DCM Trafficking will be read-only. While in read-only mode, all API delete, insert, patch, and update methods requiring the DCM Trafficking scope will be disabled. See the Scheduled Maintenance page on our developer site to learn more about the methods that will be impacted and the errors you may encounter.

What can API users do to prepare?

If your application accesses a single DCM account, we recommend simply planning ahead to avoid running workflows that use affected API methods during your account's maintenance window. Details of when this window will occur will be communicated in advance via in-product notification.

If your application accesses multiple DCM accounts, you may be subject to multiple maintenance windows. If it's not possible to plan around these windows, you should prepare your application to catch and handle maintenance related errors. Recommended error handling strategies include:

• For user initiated requests, return an error to the user along with instructions to wait up to 8 hours before retrying the request.
• For server initiated requests, retry automatically using an exponential backoff strategy. For example: pause 30 seconds before the first retry, 1 minute before the second, 2 minutes before the third, and so on up to a maximum of 8 hours. This strategy helps ensure you're not calling the API too aggressively and that your request quota is not being wasted.

Questions about this or anything else DCM API related? Contact us via our support forum.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

In accordance with our deprecation schedule, we'll be sunsetting versions 2.5 and 2.5beta1 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API on February 28th, 2017. On this date, all requests made against these versions will begin returning HTTP 403 errors.

If you're still working with these versions, we strongly encourage you to begin migrating to the most recent release to avoid an interruption in service. If you're not sure, or would like to know more about the migration process, refer to the migration guide.

As always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions that you have.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

As you've probably heard, DCM will stop serving Flash display ads on January 2nd, 2017. This is part of a wider initiative to go 100% HTML5, which you can learn more about in the DCM help center.

What does this mean for DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API users?

Beginning on January 2, 2017, the following changes will take effect:

1. Flash uploads will be disabled in API v2.5. Beginning with v2.6, the DCM API stopped supporting uploads of Flash assets and prevented users from creating new Flash In-page creatives. These same restrictions will be applied to v2.5.
2. Active Flash creatives with no HTML5 equivalent will be deactivated. Existing creatives that have not been converted to HTML5 will have their active field set to FALSE. Users will not be allowed to reactivate these creatives.

What can API users do to prepare?

Users are strongly encouraged to review their active creatives and take immediate action to replace those that will be affected by this change. We've created code samples in Java and Python to help API users identify creatives in their accounts that will be deactivated if no action is taken. See this article for links to tools to help you transition your creatives to HTML5.

Users of DCM API v2.5 are also encouraged to begin migrating to a newer API version immediately. Be aware that this version is already scheduled to sunset on February 28th, 2017.

Questions about this or anything else DCM API related? Contact us via our support forum.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Today we're releasing v2.7 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. This release introduces a number of video trafficking workflow enhancements, including:

• New configuration options for in-stream video creatives.
• Placement-level controls for companion creatives, skip buttons, and transcodes.
• Site-level video settings, which automatically apply to new placements.

Details of these and other improvements are covered in our release notes.

Deprecation and sunset reminder

In accordance with our deprecation schedule, this release marks the beginning of the deprecation period for v2.6, which will sunset on May 31st, 2017. After this date, any requests made against v2.6 will begin returning errors.

As a final reminder, API v2.4 will be sunset on November 30th, 2016. To avoid an interruption in service, all users are required to migrate off of this version by the sunset date.

Learn More

As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the release notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the Get Started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

In accordance with our deprecation schedule, we will be sunsetting v2.4 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API on November 30th, 2016. On this date, all requests made against v2.4 of the API will begin returning HTTP 403 errors.

If you're still working with this version, we strongly encourage you to begin migrating to the most recent release to avoid an interruption in service. If you're not sure, or would like to know more about the migration process, refer to the migration guide.

As always, feel free to reach out to us with any questions that you have. To receive future updates like this directly in your inbox, join the DCM API Announcements group and adjust your notification settings.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Today we're releasing v2.6 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. This release includes a number of highly anticipated features, such as:

• Reusable targeting templates for ads (learn more)
• Dynamic asset selection for In-stream video creatives (learn more)
• Support for the vCPM - Active View placement cost structure (learn more)

We've also improved click-through URL management for Display creatives, expanded custom floodlight variable support, and much more. See our release notes for full details.

Retiring legacy creative types

Beginning with this release, the DCM API no longer supports creating legacy HTML5 Banner and Image creatives. As previously announced, these legacy types have been replaced by the new streamlined Display creative.

Additionally, the ability to upload Flash assets into DCM was disabled back in June. Accordingly, this functionality is also being removed from the API beginning with this release. Previous API versions will continue to support uploading Flash assets until their respective sunset dates, but users are strongly encouraged to begin transitioning to HTML5 now.

Deprecation and sunset reminder

In accordance with our deprecation schedule, this release marks the beginning of the deprecation period for v2.5, which will sunset on February 28th, 2017. After this date, any requests made against v2.5 will begin returning errors.

As a reminder, API v2.3 will be sunset on August 31st, 2016. To avoid an interruption in service, all users are required to migrate off of this version by the sunset date.

Learn More

As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the release notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the Get Started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!
- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

One year ago we introduced a regular deprecation schedule for the DCM API. Since then, we've been listening closely to your feedback and looking for ways to improve. Today we're acting on this feedback and making a change to our announcement process, to address a common developer pain point.

Starting with the next release, we'll begin announcing sunset dates for the previous version, rather than the oldest version. This means that when v2.6 is released, a sunset date will be announced for v2.5. This small change means that the deprecation period for our releases will increase from 4 to 7 months, allowing developers more time to plan their migrations.

In order to transition to this new schedule, we're also announcing that the current previous version (v2.4) will sunset on November 30, 2016. Note that this version will be the last to provide a deprecation period shorter than 7 months.

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback. If you think there's something we could do to make this process even better, please let us know on our developer forum.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Today we're releasing v2.5 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. This release includes some exciting enhancements and functionality promoted from our previous open beta, such as:

• Updated display creative types.
• Dynamic targeting key support.
• Offline conversion upload capabilities.

Details of these and other improvements are covered in our release notes.

Deprecation and sunset reminder

In accordance with our deprecation schedule, this release marks the beginning of the deprecation period for v2.3, which will sunset on August 31st, 2016. After this date, any requests made against v2.3 will begin returning errors.

Also be aware that the v2.2 deprecation period has been extended slightly to allow users more time to migrate. The new sunset date for v2.2 is June 7th, 2016. To avoid an interruption in service, all users must migrate off of this version by the new sunset date.

Learn More

As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the release notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the Get Started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

As you may have heard, streamlined creative types are coming to DCM. The centerpiece of this effort is the new display creative, which supports HTML5, images, and Flash. To learn more, visit our DCM user support site.

How does this affect DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API users?

Part of this streamlining effort involves renaming some existing creative types. To minimize disruptions to our API users we will not be modifying any Creatives service types for currently released API versions. These types will only be updated for future API versions, beginning with the the v2.5 release. Due to this, current users may notice the following discrepancies between values returned by the DCM API, DCM UI, and DDM Reports:

API type	Old UI & Report type	New UI & Report type
CUSTOM_INPAGE	Custom in-page	Custom display
CUSTOM_INTERSTITIAL	Custom interstitial	Custom display interstitial
ENHANCED_BANNER	Enhanced banner	Display
ENHANCED_IMAGE	Enhanced image	Display image gallery
REDIRECT	Redirect	Display redirect
RICH_MEDIA_EXPANDING	Rich media expanding	Rich media display expanding
RICH_MEDIA_INPAGE	Rich media in-page	Rich media display banner
RICH_MEDIA_INPAGE_FLOATING	Rich media in-page with floating	Rich media display banner with floating
RICH_MEDIA_INTERSTITIAL_FLOAT	Rich media floating	Rich media display interstitial
RICH_MEDIA_MULTI_FLOATING	Rich media multi-floating	Rich media display multi-floating interstitial
VPAID_LINEAR	Rich media VPAID linear	VPAID linear video
VPAID_NON_LINEAR	Rich media VPAID non-linear	VPAID non-linear video

What can API users do now to prepare?

As you may have spotted in the table above, display creatives are actually an extension of an existing creative type: enhanced banner. In fact, all current and newly created enhanced banner creatives will map directly to this new type. Thanks to this, existing API versions already have full support for display creatives!

As display creatives replace the need to use HTML5 banner, Image, and Flash in-page creative types, support for inserting these legacy types will be removed in an upcoming API release. To prepare for this, API users are strongly encouraged to begin transitioning to the new display type now. We've updated our code examples to illustrate how current API versions can use display creatives to begin replacing these legacy types today:

Language	Examples
.NET	HTML 5 Banner	Image	Flash In-page
Java	HTML 5 Banner	Image	Flash In-page
PHP	HTML 5 Banner	Image	Flash In-page
Python	HTML 5 Banner	Image	Flash In-page
Ruby	HTML 5 Banner	Image	Flash In-page>

Questions about this or anything else DCM API related? Contact us via our support forum.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Today we're releasing v2.5beta1 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. This release provides a preview of features we're working on for future versions of the API. Experimental functionality being showcased includes:

• Dynamic targeting key support.
• Offline conversion upload capabilities.

Details of these and all other changes are covered in our release notes.

Be aware that the functionality being previewed here is subject to change and may not appear in subsequent releases. For these reasons, this API version is not recommended for production usage. We do however welcome you to test out these new features and let us know what you think!

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Today we're releasing v2.4 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. This release brings a number of exciting enhancements, including full support for universal ads! As we pre-announced back in November, this means that:

• Placements can now be created using new universal compatibilities.
• Creating placements using legacy in-page and in-app compatibilities is no longer supported.

Details about this and other improvements can be found in the release notes.

Deprecation and sunset reminder

In accordance with our deprecation schedule, this release marks the beginning of the deprecation period for v2.2, which will sunset on May 31st, 2016. After this date, any requests made against v2.2 will begin returning errors.

As a final reminder, API versions 1.x, 2.0, and 2.1 will be sunset on February 29th, 2016. To avoid an interruption in service, all users are required to migrate off of these versions by the sunset date.

Learn More

As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the release notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the Get Started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

In accordance with our deprecation schedule, we will be sunsetting v2.1 and all earlier versions of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API on February 29th, 2016. On this date, any requests made against v2.1 or earlier of the API will begin returning errors. If you're still actively working with any of these versions, we strongly encourage you to begin migrating to the most current release to avoid an interruption in service.

In many cases, migrating will be as easy as adopting the latest version of your preferred client library. We recommend, however, that all migrating users review the release notes to learn about important version differences you may need to be aware of.

If you have questions about this or anything else DCM API related, feel free to reach out to us on our support forum.

- Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

As you may have heard, universal ads are launching to DCM accounts throughout November and December 2015. The centerpiece of these new ads is a set of unified compatibilities that remove the distinction between in-app and in-page environments. To learn more, visit our DCM user or partner support sites.

What does this mean for DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API users?

Currently, the API does not expose these new compatibilities, although full support is coming in a future release. Until then, the in-app and in-page compatibilities you currently use will remain available. This means that there are no immediate changes necessary to your applications, but you may notice some discrepancies between the values presented by the API and UI:

API compatibility	New UI compatibility
APP	In-app
APP_INTERSTITIAL	In-app interstitial
IN_STREAM_VIDEO	In-stream video
WEB	Display
WEB_INTERSTITIAL	Display interstitial

What can API users do to prepare?

To make your future transition to universal ads easier, we recommend that API users begin transitioning off of in-app placements now. Be aware that it will no longer be possible to traffic in-app placements once universal ads support is added to the API, and existing in-app placements will not be automatically converted to use the new unified compatibilities.

Instead, newly trafficked placements should be created using in-page compatibilities. These placements will be mapped directly to the new unified compatibilities (as seen in the table above), making them immediately eligible to serve in both environments.

Questions about this or anything else DCM API related? Contact us via our support forum.

 - Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Today we're releasing v2.3 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. This release brings a number of enhancements, such as:

• Expanded validation warnings for creative assets.
• Active View opt-out for in-stream video creatives at the site level.

Deprecation and sunset reminder

In accordance with our deprecation schedule, this release marks the beginning of the deprecation period for v2.1, which will sunset on February 29th, 2016.

As a reminder, February 29th is also the end of the extended migration window we've provided to users of v2.0 and earlier versions of the API. The current schedule is as follows:

API Version	Deprecation Date	Sunset Date
v1	3 Aug 2015	29 Feb 2016
v1.1
v1.2
v1.3
v2.0
v2.1	4 Nov 2015

To avoid an interruption in service, all users are required to migrate off of these versions by the sunset date.

Learn more

As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the Release Notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the Get Started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!

 - Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Today we are releasing v2.2 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. Highlights of this release include:

• User requested enhancements: You asked and we listened! Based on your feedback, new fields--such as computed click-through URL for ad creative assignments--have been added.
• Placement search improvements: You can now search for placements and placement groups by start and end date.
• Ins tag support: When the new ins tag is enabled for your account, requests for iframe and javascript tags will return an updated tag format. We've introduced 4 new legacy tag values you can use to access the older versions of these tags, to ensure a smooth transition to the upgraded format. You can begin requesting these legacy tag values today, even if your account hasn't upgraded yet.

Retiring older API versions

Along with this release, we're introducing a new deprecation schedule and announcing the deprecation of all versions prior to v2.1. Moving forward, we will generally only support 3 versions of the API and sunset the oldest version 4 months after a new release. In order to help developers adjust to this new schedule, we're providing an extended migration period for users of these newly deprecated versions:

API Version	Deprecation Date	Sunset Date
v1	3 Aug 2015	29 Feb 2016
v1.1	3 Aug 2015	29 Feb 2016
v1.2	3 Aug 2015	29 Feb 2016
v1.3	3 Aug 2015	29 Feb 2016
v2.0	3 Aug 2015	29 Feb 2016

These versions will remain active and supported until the sunset date, and we encourage you to use this time to update your applications.

Learn more

As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the Release Notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the Get Started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!

 - Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

As we announced in December 2014, with the release of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we will be sunsetting the legacy DFA API on September 30th, 2015. To avoid an interruption in service, all DFA API users are required to update their application to use our new API by this date. If you haven’t yet started migrating, we strongly encourage you to do so.

If you’re new to the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, you can use our Get Started guide to get up and running quickly. You can also reference our Migration Guide to help in transitioning legacy DFA API applications to the new API. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to us on the developer forum.

 - Jonathon Imperiosi, DCM API Team

Today we're pleased to announce v2.1 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. This release introduces some exciting new functionality, including:

• DoubleClick Planning resources. Easy access to your DoubleClick Planning projects, inventory items, orders, and order documents.
• Enhanced remarketing list support. It's now possible to create, modify and share remarketing lists programmatically.
• Directory site creation. You can now add sites to DoubleClick's Site Directory via the directorySites.insert method.
• User profile creation and floodlight configuration sharing. In an effort to close the parity gap with the DFA API, it's now possible to create user profiles and share floodlight configurations between advertisers.

All users are encouraged to adopt this new version and begin making use of its enhanced feature set. If you're still working with the legacy DFA API, please note that it will be sunset on September 30th, 2015. We recommend that these users skip v2.0 and migrate straight to v2.1.

As with every new version of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API, we encourage you to carefully review all changes in the release notes. For those of you looking to get going right away, updated client libraries are now available. If you're just starting out, the getting started guide is a great reference to help you get up and running quickly.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!

 - Jonathon Imperiosi, DFA API Team

Starting today, the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API is available as an advanced Google service in Google Apps Script. This service allows users to easily integrate their DCM reporting and trafficking data with Google Docs and Sheets, schedule updates using triggers, and much more.

Accessing the API from Apps Script is simple: just enable the service and it's ready to use. Authentication is handled automatically and editor conveniences such as autocomplete make it easy to start writing code right away. As an example, here's a snippet of code that shows how to list all user profiles available to your Google account:

function listUserProfiles() {
  // Retrieve the list of available user profiles
  var profiles = DoubleClickCampaigns.UserProfiles.list();

  if (profiles.items) {
    // Print out the user ID and name of each
    for (var i = 0; i < profiles.items.length; i++) {
      var profile = profiles.items[i];
      Logger.log('Found profile with ID %s and name "%s".',
        profile.profileId, profile.userName);
    }
  }
}

To get started, check out the service documentation, which contains additional examples, as well as the full API reference documentation. If you have any questions, visit the API forum or reach out to Google Apps Script support.

 - Jonathon Imperiosi, DFA API Team

If you programmatically manage and report on DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) campaigns, you know that trafficking and reporting tasks have traditionally been handled by separate APIs. We realize that this can be inconvenient so today we're introducing a unified solution: the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API!

This release constitutes a new major version (v2.0) of what was previously known as the DFA Reporting API, adding functionality previously only available in our dedicated trafficking API. While older versions of our dedicated reporting and trafficking APIs will continue to remain available until September 30th, 2015, we recommend that you adopt this updated version as early as possible to take advantage of all of its new and enhanced features.

Unified trafficking and reporting experience

This release combines the trafficking functionality of the DFA API with the reporting functionality of the DFA Reporting API to create a simplified end-to-end experience. It's now possible to manage your DCM campaigns and report on their performance without switching APIs or reauthenticating. In addition, a unified object model allows you to pass data seamlessly between these two systems.

New trafficking functionality

This API expands the feature set of the DFA API to add new and improved trafficking functionality. A few highlights of this expanded functionality include:

• Event tags
• New creative formats
• Tracking ads
• SSL workflow
• Richer search criteria

Updated project quota limits

In addition to increasing the functionality of the API, we've also increased the default project quota limit. All projects can now make 50,000 requests/day (up from 10,000), to support a combined trafficking and reporting workflow. As always, requests for additional quota can be made via the Google Developers Console, should the need arise.

Learn more

This API is built on the same RESTful, standards-based technology stack previously employed by the DFA Reporting API. This means that you have access to all sorts of useful tools for trying it out, such as the APIs explorer (which is also built into the documentation for each method) and our generic, cross-API client libraries. The getting started guide is also a great reference for users who are just starting out.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions!

 - Jonathon Imperiosi, DFA API Team

Are you using the Google Ads API Java Client Library and Java 5 (1.5)? If so, we have important news: starting April 2015, all releases of the Google Ads API Java Client Library will only be compatible with Java 1.6 and higher.

Why this change is happening
The primary reasons for this change are:

• Starting with version 18.0, Guava will no longer release 1.5 backports. The Google Ads API Java Client Library uses Guava's precondition checks, I/O helpers, and other utilities extensively.
• Java 5 is a bit outdated -- it was first introduced in May 2004, and Oracle's support for Java 5 is approaching some key end dates.
• Usage of Java 5 among Google Ads API Java Client Library developers is rapidly declining.

Next steps
If you are using Java 6 or higher, then you're all set -- all releases of the client library on github already support your runtime.

If you are still using Java 5 and need to migrate to Java 6 or higher, check out the following adoption guides from Oracle:

• Java 5 to 6
• Java 6 to 7

Still have questions? Feel free to file an issue on the library's issues page or contact us via our Google+ page.

- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team