DISCLAIMER: This is not an officially supported Google product.

This tool uploads Customer Match lists to Google Ads via API.

Before running the script, you should create a remarketing list in Google Ads. It is recommended to set the membership duration to the N+3, where N is the number of days between script runs. This way, the list will be maintained with only those users that are in the audience file. If a user is removed from the file, it won't be added in the next script run and it will be eventually deleted. Matching process may take time; the +3 is a safeguard period to avoid unwanted temporary removals during this processing time.

First, you must obtain the appropriate credentials so that the script can connect to Google Ads API and upload the data. Follow the instructions here to obtain OAuth 2.0 Client IDs for an Installed App. Then, download the client secrets json file to the working directory (this file contains a Client ID and Client secret).

Once you have the file, you must obtain a Refresh token using this script:

python generate_refresh_token.py --client_secrets_path CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE

Where CLIENT_SECRETS_FILE must be substituted with the client secrets file path you downloaded previously.

The script will generate a Refresh token and print it on screen. Make a copy of it as we'll need it later.

Next, get a Developer token from Google Ads by following the instructions here.

Once you have the Client ID, Client secret, Refresh token and Developer token, you must add them to the script config file. In order to do so, edit the file googleads_config.yaml and enter the appropriate values. You'll also need the Google Ads MCC Customer ID, which you can find in Google Ads UI.

Your audience file should be named audience.csv and must be in CSV format. You must specify the fields to upload in the header row. The available fields are:

• Email
• Phone
• FirstName
• LastName
• CountryCode
• ZipCode
• MobileId
• UserId
• List

You can use plain text values and the script will hash them before uploading, or you can hash them yourself (the desired behaviour is controlled with the --hash_required flag in the script).

Currently there are three types of customer lists available:

• Customers based on email, phone, and/or mailing address uploads (CONTACT_INFO)
• Customers based on Mobile Device ID uploads (MOBILE_ADVERTISING_ID)
• Customers based on User ID uploads (CRM_ID)

The type of list to upload is controlled using the list_typeflag (the default value is CONTACT_INFO)

Each type of list only allows certain fields to be uploaded. You need to take that into account while preparing the data. The script will filter those fields depending on the list_type specified, but if the lists already exists and doesn't match the type specified, it will show an error in the upload operation.

These are the fields allowed per type:

• CONTACT_INFO:
  • Email
  • Phone
  • FirstName
  • LastName
  • CountryCode
  • ZipCode
  • List
• MOBILE_ADVERTISING_ID:
  • MobileId
  • List
• CRM_ID:
  • UserId
  • List

Once the configuration file is ready, and you have the audience file in audience.csv you can execute the script to upload the data to Google Ads:

python create_and_populate_list.py --customer_id CUSTOMER_ID

Where CUSTOMER_ID represents the Customer ID of the account where the user list will be created.

If your audience file doesn't contain a column for the audience name, you can specify a default audience to which all entries will be added. Here, YOUR_AUDIENCE_NAME will typically be the name of the audience you manually created in Google Ads for the purposes of this script:

python create_and_populate_list.py --customer_id CUSTOMER_ID --audience_name YOUR_AUDIENCE_NAME

If you don't specify any remarketing list in the audience file, the script will create a new audience list with a default name (controlled by the GENERIC_LIST variable in the script) and will add all the users to that one.

You can also specify the list type by using the --list_type flag, and passing one of the allowed values: CONTACT_INFO, MOBILE_ADVERTISING_ID,CRM_ID. The default if not specified is CONTACT_INFO.

The data is not hashed by default. If you need the script to hash the customer data, you can use the --hash_required flag to enable it.

The script has more optional parameters that allow working with custom configuration and audience file paths. For more info on them, run:

python create_and_populate_list.py --help

By default, the script launches the upload jobs, and returns. You can use the --wait flag to wait for the job to finish, but as the upload jobs can take up to 48 hours to finish, waiting is not recommended.

If you don't specify the wait flag, the script will print the job ids in the standard output, and the command you can use to check the job status.

This is an output example:

Offline user data job ID '9999999' with type 'CUSTOMER_MATCH_USER_LIST' has status: RUNNING
To check the status of the job periodically, use the following GAQL query with GoogleAdsService.Search:
        SELECT
          offline_user_data_job.resource_name,
          offline_user_data_job.id,
          offline_user_data_job.status,
          offline_user_data_job.type,
          offline_user_data_job.failure_reason
        FROM offline_user_data_job
        WHERE offline_user_data_job.resource_name =
          'customers/0000000000/offlineUserDataJobs/9999999'
        LIMIT 1
Or you can use the check_job.py script with the following args:

python check_job.py --config_file ./csemcc_config.yaml --customer_id 0000000000 --job_resource_name customers/0000000000/offlineUserDataJobs/9999999 --user_list_resource_name customers/0000000000/userLists/888888888