Google today announced that the Google Ads API will expand its product reporting capabilities starting June 15, 2026, introducing cost and conversion metrics for campaign types that previously returned only impressions and clicks, while also closing a long-standing gap in Performance Max network coverage.

The announcement, published April 30, 2026, on the Google Ads Developer Blog by Dora Sun of the Google Ads API Team, covers three distinct changes to how product-level data surfaces through the API. Each of the three changes targets a specific reporting limitation. Together they represent one of the more substantive revisions to product data infrastructure in recent months.

What is actually changing

The first change concerns the shopping_product resource. According to the announcement, "Cost and Conversion metrics will start returning data for Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns, not just Shopping and Performance Max." Until now, querying shopping_product for those three campaign types returned only high-level engagement signals - impressions and clicks. No cost data. No conversion data. Advertisers running product-linked Video campaigns or using App campaigns to drive product-related actions had no programmatic way to retrieve spend or conversion outcomes at the product level through this resource. That gap is now being closed.

The second change standardises how shopping_performance_view behaves across campaign types. According to the post, "All campaign types that use Google Merchant Center (GMC) will have results returned with shopping_performance_view." This affects developers and analysts who build cross-campaign product performance dashboards. Previously, shopping_performance_view results were inconsistent depending on campaign type, making unified product reporting across a full account harder to achieve without custom workarounds. From June 15, consistency is the default.

The third and arguably most immediately visible change involves Performance Max. According to the announcement, "All networks will start being returned for Performance Max campaigns when querying for shopping_performance_view." This matters because, until June 15, only some networks were included in Performance Max product reporting. The implication is direct: once the change goes live, the same query will return more rows and larger numbers than before, simply because network coverage is now complete.

The one-time metric spike

Google explicitly flags an important operational consideration for developers. Because Performance Max product reporting was previously returning partial network data, completing that coverage will produce what the announcement describes as "a one-time increase in all product reporting metrics for these campaigns." The spike is not a performance gain. It reflects data that was already being generated but was not being returned through the API.

Teams that have built automated alerting on top of product reporting - particularly anomaly detection systems that flag unusual increases in cost, impressions, or conversions - should account for this before June 15. Failing to do so risks triggering false positives on that date, which could produce unnecessary account interventions or client escalations. The scope of the increase will depend on how many networks were previously excluded for a given account, which Google has not specified in advance.

Historical data will not be backfilled

One constraint worth noting clearly: the new metrics and expanded campaign coverage will only be available from June 15, 2026, onward. According to the announcement, "Historical API requests for dates prior to the launch will not contain this expanded data." This is significant for any analysis requiring year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter comparisons at the product level. A query for product performance in May 2026 will not look the same as a query for product performance in June 2026, even if underlying business conditions remain identical. The structural difference in the data needs to be documented before any comparison is made.

This applies to all three changes simultaneously. There is no partial backfill, no beta period with opt-in historical access. The cutoff is hard: June 15, 2026.

The broader context: a year of API transparency improvements

The June 15 changes do not arrive in isolation. Google has been methodically extending the reporting capabilities of the Google Ads API throughout 2025 and into 2026, driven in part by sustained pressure from advertisers and developers for greater visibility into automated campaign types.

Performance Max has been the most contested battleground. Channel-level reporting for Performance Max first began reaching advertiser accounts in May 2025, breaking down campaign delivery across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps in the user interface. That capability moved to programmatic interfaces in January 2026 with the release of Google Ads API v23, which introduced specific channel breakdowns rather than the generic MIXED enum value that previous versions returned. Channel-level data through v23 only exists for dates on or after June 1, 2025 - a parallel constraint to the June 15 hard cutoff that developers now need to keep alongside it.

Google Ads API v20, released June 4, 2025, had already marked a milestone by introducing campaign-level negative keywords for Performance Max - previously only possible at account level - alongside expanded asset group reporting. Version 22, released October 15, 2025, added specialised Performance Max reporting segments including ad_using_product_data and ad_using_video, indicating whether a given ad unit draws from Merchant Center feeds or incorporates video assets.

The most recent major release, Google Ads API v24, arrived on April 22, 2026, introducing CartDataSalesView for product-sold reporting at the item level, nine new lead generation conversion type enumerations across Google Analytics 4 and Firebase, and support for VTC optimisation in Demand Gen and App campaigns. The April 30 announcement of expanded product reporting sits alongside v24 as part of the same trajectory: more data, more granularity, more campaign types covered within the same API surface.

Why Demand Gen and App campaigns matter here

Demand Gen campaigns run across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. These campaigns frequently incorporate product feeds from Google Merchant Center, particularly for retailers running shopping-adjacent creative. Until June 15, the gap between what Demand Gen actually spent on product-linked inventory and what the API reported was invisible at the product level - cost and conversions simply did not surface through shopping_product. That limitation has sat alongside a set of otherwise growing Demand Gen reporting improvements. Four new Demand Gen features arrived in November 2025including brand suitability controls and asset-level A/B experiments, yet product-level cost and conversion data remained absent from the API.

App campaigns occupy a different position. They drive installs and in-app actions across Search, Play, YouTube, and Display. Like Demand Gen, they can connect to product feeds, but product-level API reporting for these campaigns was equally limited. The June 15 change means that for the first time, developers querying shopping_product will receive cost and conversion data for App campaign traffic alongside Shopping and Performance Max.

For Video campaigns, the situation is similar. The original design of shopping_product reflected a period when Video campaigns were largely brand-awareness vehicles with limited product feed integration. As Video campaigns have increasingly incorporated product feeds across Google's visual surfaces, the gap between what those campaigns actually do and what the API reports has widened. June 15 addresses that directly.

Consistency in shopping_performance_view

The standardisation of shopping_performance_view across all GMC-connected campaign types addresses a practical pain point for developers managing multi-campaign reporting pipelines. Before June 15, a developer querying shopping_performance_view across an account with Shopping, Performance Max, Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns would receive inconsistent results depending on campaign type. Some would return data. Others would not. Building a unified product performance report required knowing in advance which campaign types would populate the view and which would not - and then coding around the gaps.

After June 15, the view is consistent: if a campaign type uses Google Merchant Center, results appear in shopping_performance_view. This simplifies query design and reduces the risk of silent data gaps in automated reports. It also means that teams building new reporting infrastructure can write simpler queries without needing to branch logic by campaign type.

Merchant Center infrastructure in the background

The reporting changes become more significant when considered alongside parallel changes to Merchant Center's programmatic infrastructure. Google launched Merchant API in August 2025 as the general availability successor to the Content API for Shopping, with the latter scheduled for shutdown on August 18, 2026. The Merchant API brings gRPC support, improved batch processing, and exclusive features including Product Studio integration. Expanded product reporting through the Google Ads API now provides a richer performance layer on top of the product data infrastructure that Merchant API manages. The two systems are distinct but complementary: Merchant API manages what product data goes into Google, while the Google Ads API reports what happens when that data runs in campaigns.

Google Merchant Center's 24-hour update promise for automatic imports has faced reliability questions, with documented delays of up to nine days observed in January 2026. Stale product data reduces the value of any campaign-level reporting expansion, since performance metrics reflect ads served against outdated product information. More granular reporting through the API surfaces this discrepancy more visibly - which may itself be useful for diagnosing feed quality issues.

Practical implications for developers and analysts

Several concrete actions follow from this announcement. Developers maintaining automated product reporting systems should identify all queries that touch shopping_product or shopping_performance_view and review what current baseline levels look like for Performance Max campaigns. Documenting those baselines before June 15 is essential for distinguishing the one-time network expansion spike from genuine performance changes.

For any reporting system that performs anomaly detection or threshold-based alerting, June 15 needs to be treated as a structural break in the data series. Alert thresholds calibrated on pre-June 15 data will need adjustment. The same applies to dashboards shared with clients or stakeholders - the increase in Performance Max product metrics requires a clear annotation at the data layer to prevent misinterpretation.

Developers building new queries for Video, Demand Gen, or App campaign product data can begin designing those queries now, but should not expect any data return until June 15. Any API call specifying a date range that predates the launch will not return the expanded data, even after the launch goes live.

Community discussion

Cory Liseno, Staff Developer Relations Engineer at Google for Advertising and Measurement, shared the announcement on LinkedIn on April 30, 2026. According to the LinkedIn post, the update brings "more transparency to your Performance Max campaigns and expanding metrics for Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns." Joseph Hayon, founder of Click Clarity AI, commented on the post: "Been waiting a long time for this update." Google has directed developers with questions to the "Google Advertising and Measurement Community" Discord server for further discussion.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Dora Sun of the Google Ads API Team announced the changes on behalf of Google. The update affects developers, marketing technology vendors, agencies, and advertisers querying product performance data through the Google Ads API, particularly those running Performance Max, Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns connected to Google Merchant Center.

What: The Google Ads API will expand product reporting in three ways starting June 15, 2026: cost and conversion metrics will begin returning data for Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns via the shopping_product resource; shopping_performance_view will consistently return results for all campaign types connected to Google Merchant Center; and all networks will begin appearing in Performance Max product reporting, producing a one-time increase in metric totals for those campaigns. Historical data before June 15 will not be backfilled.

When: The announcement was made April 30, 2026. The changes take effect June 15, 2026. Data for new metrics and expanded campaign coverage will only be available from that date forward.

Where: The changes apply to the Google Ads API globally, affecting all developers and advertisers using shopping_productand shopping_performance_view reporting resources.

Why: Reporting for products in Video, Demand Gen, and App campaigns was previously limited to impressions and clicks, leaving cost and conversion data inaccessible at the product level for those campaign types. For Performance Max, only some networks were included in product reporting, creating an incomplete picture of campaign delivery. The changes aim to provide consistent, comprehensive product performance data across all campaign types that connect to Google Merchant Center.

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