It is now possible to view your CustomerID in the Microsoft adCenter web user interface. The CustomerID is an identifier that is used in some API calls. To view your CustomerID in the web UI, click on the Accounts & Billing tab after logging in. Then click on the Company Information sub-tab. You will then see a value for the Customer ID value. Jeff Dillon,

We occasionally get questions around the new bid behavior introduced in API Version 6. Common questions include: How do I remove a match type? We updated a keyword bid to zero; we thought we would see a default bid value in the web UI? We never bid for Exact match, so why are we showing .05 cents as the bid in the web UI? An Exact bid doesnt show up when we retrieve the same keyword bid values via the API. So I thought I would take the time to clear things up.

We are continuing to work on ongoing Sandbox issues. Currently the CustomerManagement service is not available, which means that the GetAccounts and CustomerSignup methods are not available. If you attempt to make a call to GetAccounts, you will receive "Unauthorized Access". We hope to have this resolved soon, and apologies for the inconvenience. This only applies to the Sandbox environment, the Production environment is not affected. Jeff Dillon,

The Sandbox+ API testing environment is currently undergoing an upgrade to bring it on par with recent enhancements in our Production environment. It should be back online later tonight. Apologies for the inconvenience. Jeff Dillon,

We have received several support requests regarding CustomerID that is used in the adCenter API SOAP header. I was hoping to clear up some of the qeustions for those of you upgrading to adCenter API version 6 by our Oct0ber 31 deadline. The CustomerID is only needed for a small number of adCenter API calls, specifically the targeting library calls such as CampaignManagement AddTargetsToLibrary. If you are not using the target libraries, you won't need it,

NOTE: Per Jeff's comment below, these issues are not reported as fixed. Please let us know if you experience issues or have questions. -Chris We are currently investigating reports that some users are receiving time out errors when connecting to the adCenter API. We are looking into this as a highest priority, and will post more here when we have more information. We apologize for this inconvenience. Jeff Dillon,

We are currently investigating reports that some users are receiving time out errors when connecting to the adCenter API. We are looking into this as a highest priority, and will post more here when we have more information. We apologize for this inconvenience. Jeff Dillon,

Today the Microsoft adCenter API Production environment is undergoing planned system maintenance during the release of API Version 6. Although you will experience no downtime, and your ads will continue to serve, you may notice some delays in reporting data. Some users have noted reporting errors. We hope to address this very soon. Watch for an e-mail message next week about how you can try out the new adCenter Spring Upgrade features and API Version 6.

This 6-minute video covers the basics of analyzing SOAP messages when making calls to the adCenter API. The audience would be those individuals already using the adCenter API and wishing to learn how to effectively troubleshoot and analyze their SOAP messages. Analyzing your SOAP allows you to successfully make adjustments to your code when encountering possible issues when connecting to the adCenter API. Double-click on the video to view full screen. Jeff Dillon,

We are doing maintenance on the API Sandbox environment today Jan 14 between 11 am and 3 pm Pacific time, so you may experience intermittent issues with the UI and API. Jeff Dillon,

This 10-minute video covers the basics of capturing SOAP messages in various languages when making calls to the adCenter API. The audience would be those individuals already using the adCenter API and wishing to learn how to effectively troubleshoot and report issues that may arise. Providing SOAP headers to our API support staff greatly assists us in quickly resolving issues. You may choose the .Net, Java, PHP,

Attached are several XML reports containing sample data using Daily Aggregation and Customized Date Range. AdGroupPerformanceReport.xml AdPerformanceReport.xml CampaignPerformanceReport.xml KeywordPerformanceReport.xml They are contained in Reports.zip Enjoy!

When building Version 5.1 adCenter API applications in Visual Studio 2005, you will want to use the wsdl.exe utility when creating the proxy files for those services that are of the .asmx type. These include: Administration â€" https://adcenterapi.microsoft.com/Api/Advertiser/v5.1/Administration/Administration.asmx CustomerManagement â€" https://adcenterapi.microsoft.com/Api/Advertiser/v5.1/CustomerManagement/CustomerManagement.

If you follow the directions at Getting Started with the Microsoft adCenter API you may encounter the error 'OptionProcessingHelper threw an exception' when running svcutil.exe. You may resolve this issue by upgrading to .NET 3.0 SPI available here . Also, when using Visual Studio 2008, the use of svcutil.exe is not necessary.

When transferring large amounts of data )large arrays( in Version 5 of the API when using .NET, some changes to the client configuration may be necessary. The following elements may need to be adjusted in app.config, for example: · MaxReceivedMessageSize · MaxBufferSize )should be same size as MaxReceivedMessageSize( · MaxItemsInObjectGraph For MaxItemsInObjectGraph, a custom behavior is needed,

When using V5 of the API, it is now possible to send nulls for object properties that should remain intact. However, when sending nulls or zeroes for bids, the system incorrectly sees the bid as less than floor price and you may see an error returned in the response message. We are hoping to resolve this issue this week. It is ok to send nulls for other object properties in V5, as described in our MSDN API documentation : V5 offers the ability to update campaigns, ads,

Archived: February 25, 2008 The adCenter UI prepends an "http://" to the DestinationURL upon Save unless you choose Keyword destination URL in the Destination URL drop down when editing an ad. So if you already have an "http://" in Param1 for your keyword as set via the API for example, you now have two when the ad serves, and the link will be broken as it would look like http://http://company.com . There are workarounds through proper usage, however.